Winter Burrow is a woodland survival game about a mouse that is trying to restore their childhood home. This is labelled as a 'cosy' game, but I must say, I just keep dying! It's actually extremely hard to survive as a little mouse out in the forest, especially during the wintertime.
Inside the home, everything is a wreck. You need to gather materials outside your home to then craft and refinish the home you once remembered. A lot of the cycle is exiting your home and trying to remember exactly where you came from using the clues around you. At first, you really don't have many things in your sack, so you need to start gathering resources. Food is the most important bit for me.
There are lots of different ways to get food, but at first, it's primarily gathering mushrooms and beating up small bugs that don't attack quickly. These bugs drop meat! You then sort of need to cook a lot of these foods to make them actually help fill up your food bar, which can be done at your home. This does mean there is a lot of back and forth, which makes sense, as you can also freeze to death if you are out in the cold at night.
Your footsteps in the snow can help you, but they do go away over time, and you sometimes can end up walking over yourself, so it's a bit hit and miss. This is one of those games that feels more challenging than anything else, especially when you first start, as there really isn't much to have stored. If you do end up dying to bugs or to cold, you lose most of what you are carrying, which ends up on the ground for you to pick up.
Over time, in Winter Burrow, if you avoid dying, you can end up crafting items that allow you to explore further, keep warm outside your home, and even cook! This will allow you to gather even more resources, but you will also come across more dangerous creatures that are lurking in the snow.
There is also this customise-a-house option, which allows you to move around furniture and make this home perfect for you, but I spent a lot of my time with Winter Burrow trying to survive and stockpiling food instead of decorating my home.
Winter Burrow review - "It's hard to survive"
Winter Burrow is a harsh survival game where you are trying to fix up your old family home and survive a brutal winter.
Jupiter Hadley
Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, and judges many jams and events. You can find her on Twitter as @Jupiter_Hadley