Winter Burrow is a cute game that will not leave anyone indifferent

When it comes to crafting survival games, the first ones that come to mind are ambitious 3D sandboxes like Minecraft, Rust or Valheim. However, don’t write off games inspired by Don’t Starve – after all, survival and crafting elements are also present there. While Klei Entertainment’s 2013 classic indie game is pretty hardcore, many of the games inspired by it have become more cozy and cute.

Winter Burrow by Pine Creek Games has found its place in the peeps of cozy survival crafting games. It needs to become more relaxed and less tense to fully immerse the player in the right atmosphere.

Winter Burrow is a cozy forest survival game about a mouse who returns home to rebuild his childhood sanctuary. Explore, gather resources, build tools, knit warm sweaters, bake pies, and meet the locals!”

As soon as the game was announced, it immediately gained the attention of many and became one of the most anticipated indie games. In general, this project has a rather curious history of appearance:

Funnily enough, my first inspiration came from the game 7 Days to Die (survival during the zombie apocalypse), and I imagined what it would be like — playing as a woodland creature. I soon realized that I couldn’t make a 3D game of that size, so I looked at a 2D game, and then was inspired by Don’t Starve.

The result is a cute adventure about a mouse who returns to the burrow his parents created long ago. From there, players have to gradually improve and modernize their burrow by mining resources and overcoming winter storms. Winter Burrow’s gorgeous art style has been further improved since the first demo was released on Steam last year.

There’s even more detail and cool lighting that adds even more coziness. Overall, this design allows the game to cleverly switch between feeling cool and warm depending on where the player is. The core gameplay isn’t anything new or unusual, especially if you’ve played any similar games before. Resources, such as wood and stone, are scattered throughout the forests surrounding the burrow, and players must collect them to create the items needed to advance.

At first you just collect things on the ground, but soon you’ll start creating tools to gather resources faster and then use them to improve your burrow or create new clothes for your mouse. By improving their burrow, players gain increased stats each day to help them progress further and withstand the snowstorms they may encounter.

Players will be able to use their burrow to build new clothes and clothes for their mouse.

While gathering resources, players are constantly monitoring health, hunger, and heat stats, with heat being used up the fastest. This makes the game even more realistic. Winter Burrow’s risk —reward-based gameplay loop is all about deciding when is the right time to return to the burrow. To help with this, players’ footsteps will stay on the snow — a feature Pine Creek added after noticing players were trying to use them to find the burrow.

Pine Creek added this feature after noticing players were trying to use them to find the burrow.

Add mechanics like cooking, and Winter Burrow plays all the right notes as a cozy survival game. If you love cute animals, cozy games, and this format of games, then Winter Burrow should be a must-have for you.

Winter Burrow will be released for PC and Xbox Series X/S in 2025 and will be available through the Xbox Game Pass program from day one. A demo of the game is available on Steam.