Show of hands, who else was victimized by the story of Fievel Mousekewitz growing up?
Winter Burrow, the debut title from Pine Creek Games, a fully remote studio founded in Denmark, has all the makings of something special. Wonderful music. Lovingly crafted, hand-drawn art. An adorable cast of woodland creatures. Cozy vibes mixed with the bite of surviving a cold, harsh winter (And I’m Minnesotan, so that’s my jam every winter). This game has been on my radar from its first announcement, and when I was given the opportunity to play it early and review it, I was thrilled.
So why the three and a half stars, even with a game that seems to be 100 percent in my wheelhouse?
On my review scale, I decided that three stars would mean the game is worth a look, which this indeed reaches. I consider a four-star game a hidden treasure, but as it stands right now, Winter Burrow’s good bones need to be nurtured a little bit more.
I grew up watching (and adoring) the first two American Tail movies, so the life and times of Fievel Mousekewitz were very much a part of my childhood. Even with the difference in art style, I couldn’t help but think fondly of the movies as I played Winter Burrow. You’re all grown up when the game starts, heading back, away from the big city, to the little burrow where you grew up with your parents, where you’ll meet up with your aunt.
The Burrow itself has fallen into disarray, leaving you to have to cobble together some basic items before you can find your aunt, and that’s when the game really begins to pick up. She helps you with various crafting recipes before the game takes a shortcut into being a rescue game.
This is where I had my first real issue with the game. I’ll tag it below, so feel free to click at your own discretion.
SPOILERS (Click to open)
The natural enemy of a mouse in the wild? An owl, of course. A fierce-looking one comes along while you’re visiting your aunt, and she throws herself in front of you as it attacks, scooping her up instead of you.
The concept of cozy survival, which they’ve noted as a big point of Winter Burrow, intrigued me from the beginning. I had figured the ‘survival’ aspect would be more about surviving the elements, managing yourself in the cold while gathering resources needed to cook food, make furniture, etc. The side story with your Aunty threw me for a loop, mainly because it felt more violent than anything I’d done so far. (Mainly just taking out beetles for food, but if you wanted to, you could avoid them and stick to mushrooms, berries, teas, pies…There’s no shortage of food you can craft without needing meat.)
As you explore more of the forest, you’ll meet different kinds of forest creatures, which I appreciated. There’s Bufo the toad, Gnawtusk the squirrel, and Willow the Mole. You’ll also go from encountering beetles that you may or may not want to fight to get meat, to ants that you’ll have to scurry to avoid if you’re not looking to take them on, to seemingly mammoth spiders that were honestly a bit of a jump scare the first time I saw one.
If you’re an arachnophobe, Pine Creek did add an option you can toggle in the menus to avoid the menacing spiders
My other issues with Winter Burrow? (I’m honestly not sure how to phrase it other than that. The word issues makes it seem terrible, but it’s not, because I keep coming back to it.) There were times where I’d get a notification on the screen, and most of the time, after a few seconds, it would fade away. There were several instances of the opposite, though. I’d finish a task, try to pick something up and my inventory would be full, and the corresponding alert would stay on the screen, taking up space. I could go into different menus, switch active quests, and the only thing that would fix it was to quit out of the game and restart.
The other issues I had were mostly were navigating between menus and the in-game storage. The developers recommend playing the game with controller, which I did (I played almost equally on my desktop and Steam Deck). Sometimes, the menus felt a bit twitchy, going back and forth between what was equipped and what was in my inventory.
Finally, while the game gave me plenty of ways to store the plethora of items I would pick up foraging in the forests and those I would craft, it was a chore to find and retrieve items I needed, even while using multiple chests. I hope that Pine Creek considers adding a sort feature in the future, making inventory management just a little less of a hassle.
Winter Burrow is a heartfelt debut that beautifully captures the spirit of cozy survival, blending warmth, nostalgia, and a touch of adventure through its charming art and woodland world. While its storytelling and atmosphere shine, weird shifts in tone and technical hiccups occasionally break the immersion, from the unexpectedly dark turn in its narrative to nagging menu issues and clunky inventory management. Still, there’s undeniable heart here, the foundations of something truly special. With a bit more polish and refinement, Winter Burrow could easily evolve from “worth a look” to the hidden treasure I know it can be.
Winter Burrow is out today on PC, Xbox, Xbox Game Pass, and Nintendo Switch.