It should be clear at a glance that a lot of love went into this game - everything from the visuals, to the music, to the little atmospheric touches is top notch. When you first open up the game, its hard not to fall a little in love with the sheer charm present. Every NPC you run across has a near instant lovability to their writing, but never overstaying and drowning you with dialogue. You step into your little tree trunk home, and the thought of getting to customize it has your mind brimming with ideas. The result of putting down even a couple items is so unbearably cute, you look at the little space and can't help but feel satisfied. You head outside into the snow, and you look at the little trail your mouse has made and you just smile.

But wait, if I'm saying all that why is this a negative review? Well as much as I wish I liked this game, the reality is that beyond all the artistic flair, lovely visuals, and little magical touches is a gameplay loop that is dead boring. Mind numbingly so. Everything you do requires materials, which makes sense this is a survival game right? Except the survival aspect is so forgiving that its more apt to call it a grind loop. The survival mechanics are so bare bones and bog standard in execution, it feels like a code functionality test rather than something intended to be played.

Make your warming tea to handle the cold, pack your tools, go outside and get ready to swap tools and mash a single button to harvest materials again and again. Get too cold, down that warming tea you were able to craft from the start of the game, restore your meter, back to grinding. Maybe kill a beetle by button mashing, since it doesn't have much combat ability and as long as your let yourself recover your stamina before getting into the next fight you'll simply beat it into the ground before it has a chance to hurt you. Repeat until your bag is full of goodies, head home, and drop all your items off and see if you have enough to complete whatever your objective is, then repeat. The incredibly small player inventory just makes the whole process even more drawn out and agonizing.

At first I thought it was this simple because I was in the starting zone. I expected that later on I would need to pack more carefully to handle new environmental dangers and more formidable opponents. I wasn't expecting punishing difficulty, just a little mental engagement - that never happens. Enemies remain as damage sponges you can easily handle as long as you stay moving and watch your stamina. The only difference in materials is how far out you have to go to get them to fulfill your recipe requirements - something that becomes more annoying to as you need to dedicate more slots to warming items, and materials for campfires to rest at as checkpoints. The gameplay doesn't change, just how much time you need to spend ferrying items back and forth.

I guess I expected that since their marketing is very clear that this is a survival game, I expected to actually get to engage with real mechanics. But a survival gameplay loop that strips out actual challenge is just a worse version of a game centered around material collection. Winter Burrow sits in this weird space where it's just not deep enough mechanically to create a fun survival loop, but all the trappings of the genre are still there to punish you enough that mindless foraging and collection doesn't feel great either. While the game provides many different ways to buff your character's stats, in practice it isn't impactful enough to create different playstyles or approaches. Mechanically there just isn't enough depth for it to ask anything more of the player than press a button to gather materials or hit enemies, and move.

Since collection is annoying, every little upgrade or decoration you want for your home doesn't feel exciting to get. I found myself avoiding crafting little decorations for my home, because I would just have to spend time doing something I actively disliked to do so. Why spend 30 minutes getting items to create a little dining nook, when I could head further out and progress the current main objective? So many recipes are locked behind the story line, what if I waste a bunch of time making furniture that I'm then going to replace with new items that take just as long to get the materials to make? In other games, I find myself ignoring the main quest and lose hours decorating my player home or base until its just right. Winter Burrow's cozy customization is a huge part of why I picked up the game, and I barely engaged with it since it was such a slog.

But hey maybe the charm and emotional connection is worth it right? I stated before that I really liked the NPCs - so its unfortunate that they are basically all tied into their own little quest lines. This game has a story, and each NPC has their little tasks they need from you... that are just more grinding materials and ferrying them over. You don't really interact with anyone outside of these quests, so even if you like someone don't expect that you're going to get to engage with them like you do in games like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, or Fields of Mistria. Your engagements with them are very limited, so even if you find the characters charming at first you aren't going to interact with them very much. Go ahead, spend even more time mindlessly collecting materials to get a little more dialogue out of these characters. Once you finish their plotline, these NPCs are as good as scenery.

I think the worst part of it for me is that I only realized how dull this game loop was a couple hours in. With all the effort put into the game in every other area, I was certain it would pick up momentum. By the time I realized it never would, I was already past the refund window for it. The amount of energy put into every aspect of this game is incredible and worth praise, but it feels like they forgot to add the "fun" into it. Everything looks pretty, and feels bare bones in actual content. I wish I could love this game, but I just can't.

If despite reading this, you think that maybe you really are just looking for something sweet and simple so this might still be for you - take a look at the negative reviews first. A lot of more concise and clear spoken people get into the pitfalls of this game better than I can here. If you can understand what the game actually offers and what it can't deliver on, then you will have a better idea of if this will disappoint you or not.

Pros:
+ Beautiful art
+ very cozy vibes
+ somber plot

Cons:
- short playtime
- repetitive tasks
- some unbalanced resources

Neutral
~ bad kbm controls

Winter Burrow is a very cute and cozy little adventure that I mostly enjoyed playing. The kbm controls are really poorly optimized, so I spent my 6 hours of playtime using a controller instead, which worked perfectly.

Unfortunately, those 6 hours were all it took to complete the story. There were some crafting achievements I left incomplete, but I have done everything else there is to do in the game. For it's current full price of $20, 6 hours is simply not enough for me to consider this game worth it's price.

Additionally, the resource spawning needs to be balanced a little bit. For example, the middle tier clothing requires an item that is randomly generated all across the map, making it somewhat difficult to gather. The top tier clothing however, requires a resource that is readily available and can be harvested in mass causing me to skip the middle tier almost entirely.

All in all, this game features some nice music, cute art, and really cozy vibes, but is not worth it at full price. I recommend picking this up for $10 or less.

Happy gaming!

Winter Burrow is a cute survival game that feels low stakes and let's you enjoy its adorable art style and great soundtrack.

There are definitely some quality of life updates that can be done to the game, the latest update of adding a map is definitely a great addition, but would be nice to be able to mark things on it as well, considering that you need to backtrack to certain areas when you upgrade your tools.
Another great addition would be sorting of the inventory, especially during the later stages of the game that your house storage is quite full.

Overall though, it's a short enough game to get through, while enjoying being a small mouse in the wilderness with a heart warming story. I look forward to any future updates the devs come with to delve back into this wintery world.