Winterburrow is almost too relaxing a game

And its controls need some work

Pine Creek Games / Noodlecake

Pine Creek Games’ Winterburrow has that cozy zen factor of Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing – it’s casual, relaxing, and positive. You play as a mouse who’s turned its back on life in the big city to return home, only to find that its childhood home is in ruins and its aunt is missing. That premise should make clear what your mission in the game is: Restore your burrow to its former glory and solve the mystery of your missing aunt.

You do that by exploring the area around your home and picking up resources – yes, essentially this is a survival-crafting game. You gather resources to upgrade your home, unlocking recipes and equipment as well as new crafting tools to make them.

However, your expeditions are restricted by two factors: One is a stamina bar, which slowly goes down over the course of a day. You can refill it a little by eating something, but at some point you need to get some sleep. The other restriction is that it’s bloody cold outside of your comfy house with its warming fireplace. You can only stay outside for so long before freezing to death, which necessitates frequent stops home. However, you can find campfires outside and light them as well as knit warmer clothes for yourself, expanding your effective exploration range over time.

Meals restore some stamina on the road. / Pine Creek Games / Noodlecake

The game drives you onwards with concrete goals to achieve, never leaving you guessing as to what you should do next. You can also meet some NPCs out in the world, though my short time with the game at Gamescom 2024 didn’t quite allow me to explore how deep the interactions go.

Visually, the game is adorable – especially your little mouse character.

Less stellar were the game’s controls and their tutorialization, because some important options were never even explained – the game would tell you to do something, but never how despite it being the beginning of the story, where you’d think tutorials would be in place to help new users out.

I’m a little worried about the game being a bit too zen, though – even the best survival-crafting games can become dull, but most of them will have some combat or other activities to break the monotony of collecting resources. Winterburrow, in the small part I’ve played at least, didn’t have any of that. It was just about running around, picking things up, clicking some menus to craft a different thing, and repeat. As mentioned earlier, what I played was the beginning of the game, which means that perhaps more advanced gameplay systems might be introduced later down the line.

Extract resources from your area while managing your stamina and warmth. / Pine Creek Games / Noodlecake

I guess things got a little intense when I misjudged how far away from home I was as my warmth meter was getting dangerously low, but then again, the solution to that was simply to walk around some more and find my house.

That said, I don’t think I’m the target audience for this title – to this day, the team criticizes me for not liking Stardew Valley. It’s true, I find it unbelievably boring. So if you’re like me, then chances are that Winterburrow won’t have much to offer you. On the flipside, if that’s exactly your thing, then I think Winterburrow should be on your radar – even I can’t deny the charm it exudes.

Winterburrow is expected to be out in 2025 on PC and Xbox Series X|S.