• Price: $19.99 USD (currently on sale for $17.99 until November 27th)
• Developer: Pine Creek Games
• Publisher: Noodlecake
• Release Date: November 12, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by Future Friends Games on behalf of Pine Creek Games and Noodlecake. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: rated E 10+; loss of parents, death in nature, family issues, insects

I’ve always considered myself more of a “city mouse,” but in Winter Burrow your cute little mouse character returns to their childhood burrow in the forest to live a simpler life. Unfortunately, the burrow has fallen into disrepair with no one to look after it, so you’ll have to brave the harsh winter conditions (and aggressive insects!) to gather food as well as materials to repair your home.

Venturing out of your shabby sanctuary, the elements will start to affect you right away. You have 4 stats to keep an eye on as you explore: health, warmth, hunger, and stamina. Once your warmth or hunger meters reach zero your health meter starts to go down. (Leveling up these stats by eating or staying out in the cold longer could have been an interesting mechanic to strengthen the mouse as players advance through the game.)

Some insects – which are the same size as our mouse for some reason 😂 – attack you as soon as they see you, which is another way your health meter can go down. You can defend yourself with the tools you craft.

There are 3 types of tools that you can craft: an axe, a pickaxe, and a shovel. These all have upgrades that you can unlock as you advance through the game. Using these tools, you can gather materials such as flax fibers to “knit” clothing with higher resistance to the cold. I love the image of the mouse “knitting,” and how equipping the clothing changes the mouse’s appearance.

I think that the warmth meter is the most important stat in the game, as it depletes the fastest when you leave the burrow. It seems like it depletes even faster at night. The warmth meter could be a little annoying at first until I got the first clothing upgrade, but I did appreciate the way the game clearly warns you when the warmth meter is about halfway down by “freezing” the outer edges of the screen.

An important aspect of exploring is keeping the warmth meter as full as possible. There are several ways to do this. One way is by eating some food, which you can cook at home once you’ve repaired the stove.

Different foods restore different stat meters, with the most important ones restoring your warmth. While the ingredients you gather can also add to your warmth meter, cooked foods have greater effects. Eventually you can grow some food inside of your house to supplement the ingredients you gather.

When you run into other animals, their campsites act as safe zones that replenish your warmth meter. You also unlock crafting recipes for campfire kits and kindle to use when exploring; be strategic about eating food as well as using the other animals’ campsites and the ones you make. Doing so allows you to make it further into the forest, especially because sleeping at your campsites helps you avoid the bitter cold at night.

By helping the other animals with their problems you’ll unlock crafting recipes for stronger versions of your tools, which then allow you to destroy obstacles that previously prevented you from accessing another area in the forest. But I had several issues with exploring in this game.

For one thing, it seemed like a lot of the rocks and other obstacles blended in too much with the environment; personally I found it hard to tell where I needed to remove some obstacles to advance. I have a hard time with directions in real life and games, and the lack of map was probably my biggest issue here. (To be fair, there are some piles of leaves that kind of point you in the right direction occasionally.)

I found myself wandering around in circles quite a bit trying to figure out what I missed. The “find stash” quest was challenging because I assumed that I needed to dig the clearly marked piles of snow around the specified “landmarks” to find the items – only to finally realize that you have to dig under those objects, which have no digging indicator.

Aside from frequently feeling lost in the middle to late parts of the game, I think they also could have done better with providing a wider variety of clothing, enemies, and crops, although there was a pretty decent variety of furniture. The only real issue I had with crafting and cooking was that you only have the options to either make one item or “craft all,” using all of the materials for that recipe to craft the maximum amount possible. There’s no in-between.

I did like how they gave us the ability to track what we need for a crafting recipe we plan to use. The game also lets you know when you have everything you need, which is quite convenient. Crafting is a major part of Winter Burrow, and I had fun unlocking new recipes; it was especially satisfying to craft the new tool upgrades.

It took me about 15 hours to complete the game, and overall I found it quite charming. The soundtrack is lovely, as are the illustrations for important story scenes. The story isn’t overly complex, but I appreciated the writing style, which included fun nature-inspired versions of expressions. While some players could find it a little frustrating at times, this is an adorable survival game with some cozy elements that tells a story about a small community of animals working together to survive the harsh winter.