Review: Winter Burrow (Nintendo Switch)
Contrasting a bitter environment with an adorable style, Winter Burrow is a survival game in which you play as an orphaned mouse rebuilding your home in the depths of a harsh winter. Despite its cute appearance, it immediately establishes just how cruel the game world can be through the tragic backstory of your parents’ death.
Upon returning to your childhood burrow, you find it in a terrible state of disrepair and are tasked with rebuilding it so you have somewhere cosy to live. You travel around the chilly winter forest, using your trusty axe to chop down trees to collect resources, including wood to build, food to cook and fibres to knit warmer clothes. You first fix up the things already in the house; the stove, the bed, the chair, to ensure you have the basic necessities covered. As you get better materials and tools, you can eventually access an upstairs section to build a bedroom and a downstairs where you can grow edible mushrooms.
Whenever you venture outside, you have to keep track of your wellbeing in the form of health, hunger and temperature. If you get too hungry or cold, your health will suffer. If your health falls to zero, you’ll collapse and lose everything you’ve gathered. You can choose to use the limited space in your bag to carry tea and snacks with you that will warm you up and keep your belly full.
It’s not terribly difficult to balance everything you need to survive. You unlock new skills and tools fairly swiftly, and the resources you need are easy enough to find. This lends itself well to the cosy atmosphere of Winter Burrow and allows the game to focus on the story.
As you explore, you meet a number of colourful characters, who ask you to help with their own errands in exchange for their input on yours. They give you clues about where you can find the things that you need and lend their expertise to helping upgrade your tools. Their individual stories build to offer a rich picture of what life is like in the woods, complete with the challenges that come from the environment and the characters’ complex interpersonal relationships. Each journey is well written and wholesome, with sometimes heart-wrenching moments that ultimately give the sense of community at its heart all the more weight.
Winter Burrow has plenty of tension built into the story. On top of the bitter cold and sparse food, you have to also contend with predators. But it manages to remain cosy and doesn’t rush you. The infinite winter doesn’t feel unrealistic based on the rules of the game world, so you can take as long as you need to tie up all the loose ends around you and build your home the way you want it.
Making furniture and decorations for your burrow is essentially optional. You can focus purely on the story and only craft things you need to explore deeper into the forest. Or you can choose to spend your time creating primarily the items that will make your home feel truly yours. The balance feels difficult to strike, but Winter Burrow has achieved this excellently. It has enough story to keep you engaged, while also giving you the freedom to curate your own little space in this cute if challenging world.
