Winter Burrow review — Cozy survival

The nights are getting darker, and the air is getting colder as we approach the winter months in the UK, and all I want to do after a long day of studying is to kick back and play one of my cozy games. One that has seemed to have arrived at the perfect time is Winter Burrow, a woodland survival indie game where you take control of a mouse trying to survive the harsh winter in his rundown family burrow. You’ll rebuild what’s left of it to create your own home, whilst venturing out into the wilderness to scavenge for resources and help others along the way. The presentation and vibes of this indie are immaculate and make for a cozy classic.

Winter Burrow is undoubtedly sweet and queues a lot of awes when you see your mouse wrapped up in his woolly apparel amidst scenery that looks like it comes out of a fairytale book. However, Winter Burrow likes to tread the line of tragedy rather than fully give into the whimsy, which provides a nice balance of realism and creates stakes for our little mouse. Right at the beginning of the game, we learn that our little mouse moved to the city from the forest with his parents. To provide for the family and to make ends meet, his parents end up working themselves to death, so he decides to travel back to his old home to start life anew. Ouch. And don’t worry, there’s plenty more tragic story beats coming up so prepare for a bit of a tearjerker. This was one of my favourite parts of this game and it’s a very different approach to take compared to other cozy games.

The story of the game itself is small-scale but definitely packs a punch as you reconnect with the people that live in the neighborhood; just don’t expect grand tasks and adventures as the contents of the game are quite simple and mundane. This is matched with a rather short runtime of 10 hours and not a lot of reason to go back after the credits.

Winter Burrow is a mix of resource management, house decorating, crafting, and survival, reminiscent of the Don’t Starve games, which both feel more like a challenge than a completely comfortable experience. Our mouse has four gauges that he’ll have to keep an eye on, including health, hunger, warmth, and stamina. Let one of these drop to zero - except for stamina, which automatically replenishes when you’re not doing actions - and you perish, dropping your stuff and respawning you back home. During my playthrough, the biggest hurdle was warmth as when you go outside of your burrow, it begins to constantly deplete. Depending on the time of day, that speed will also increase. This means that you can’t go out endlessly exploring, you have to gauge if it’s worth moving on to the next area or legging it back home. There are strategies to prolong these expeditions, which include building bonfires and eating food, but it all felt like a perfect balance to ensure I thought about every time I went outside to explore or gather resources.

The other gauges never drew too much of my attention like warmth did as you only had to sparingly eat food, and I found Winter Burrow’s combat never presented any danger. Speaking of combat, the game doesn’t let you go crazy with a sword to become a master of the blade, but has you just swung your axe into enemies to chip away at health. You’ll encounter different enemy bugs that range from passive cockroaches to aggressive ants, but combat was never a strong point of my adventure. I would just swing my axe and run away to regain stamina, with the enemies having a really slow window to attack me. Even with much larger enemies that were daunting at first, I could still use this same strategy and finish the fight relatively unscathed. There’s not much to experience in this department, but that’s easy to overlook as a minor part of the game.

Other activities the mouse engages in are crafting and cooking. You’ll find resources like different types of wood, grass, and animal fur that can be crafted into items like tools and furniture. One of my disappointments with the game was a lack of decoration with aesthetics being separated into a few categories with the same type of furniture, a bed, table and chair. The furniture itself was cute, but I never found much incentive to go out of my way to decorate my burrow, lessening the feeling of it being a home I had created.

The world of Winter Burrow is a beautiful one, separated into distinct areas that all have their own unique resources and enemies to discover. Each area also has its own resident NPC who you’ll help with around 3 or 4 quests. The characters were developed nicely with – again – some pretty sad storylines that brought to life the harshness of Winter Burrow’s world. However, the quests associated with them were nearly all fetch quests so some variety would have been appreciated.

The added challenge of Winter Burrow is also its lack of map, adding a layer of stress with how far you can try to go as the sun begins to set. Areas are distinct with their own sub-areas having landmarks you can remember when you pass through them again, but I also often found myself flailing around in circles when my warmth would start running low trying to figure out where to go. Strategy comes in the form of planning your routes and deciding where you’ll set up bonfires that will help you go that tiny bit farther. The only weird part that I hope gets patched is a particular function with lighting kindling at a bonfire. You can light kindling at a bonfire and sleep so you can miss the nighttime period, the purpose being to elongate your journey. However, there’s a section of the early morning that rapidly depletes your warmth, but you can’t negate this without using a second load of kindling, as when you wake up the fire is out. I wish the kindling lasted a bit longer, so it didn’t feel pointless to sleep, only to have the same negative effects from entering the dusk period.