![\"Winter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SEI_274087045-2055.jpg\")
\n\t\tWinter Burrow \u2013 can you survive the cuteness? (Noodlecake)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tWinter Burrow \u2013 can you survive the cuteness? (Noodlecake)<\/p>\n
A new family friendly survival game for Nintendo Switch<\/a> and Game Pass<\/a> challenges you to live through a freezing midwinter as a lowly mouse.<\/p>\n By their very nature, survival games can be quite dark, with your character usually starting by eking out a bare bones subsistence, your primary driver often being simply finding food. As you progress, and supply lines come together, you can move onto more interesting and complex goals. In Subnautica<\/a>, that was base building and exploration, in Rust it was base building and defending yourself against murderous fellow survivors.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s Minecraft<\/a>, which made the process of survival fun and colourful. While Winter Burrow doesn\u2019t have any bright colours, it\u2019s also a family friendly survival game, and therefore one where no matter what happens, nothing gets too gruesome. It\u2019s not without its moments of darkness though, including its set-up, where your mouse hero\u2019s parents die in a rodent metropolis, sending him back to their now dilapidated woodland home, where he sincerely hopes his Aunt Betulina will be waiting.<\/p>\n When you get there, your aunt\u2019s nowhere to be found and your partially caved-in house is in need of urgent repair work. The first order of business is to make yourself a tiny makeshift axe so you can chop down twigs and fallen branches to build a fire. You\u2019ll also need to find food, which can be anything from mushrooms to windfall elderberries, which along with everything else are frozen solid by the icy snows of winter.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019re warm and have rudimentary shelter, it\u2019s time to begin reconstruction efforts. To assist in that your cosy tree stump home comes with a crafting bench and, once you\u2019ve repaired it, an armchair where you can sit and knit, producing useful rope along with a warmer outfit to wear. That proves to be essential, because as soon as you leave your front door your body temperature steadily decreases.<\/p>\n When it drops to the halfway point, frost appears around the edges of the screen, which gradually encroaches further into your vision, until your body heat is fully dissipated, at which point your health bar starts dropping. It\u2019s then urgent that you find your way back to your burrow before you die of hypothermia, with a night\u2019s sleep fully restoring your health.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t conflict too much with general survival, because night exploration is initially out of the question \u2013 your body temperature plummeting so quickly it\u2019s untenable. Not that your daytime meanderings are exactly straightforward, because even once you\u2019ve scavenged enough material to make a cosy hat, shirt, and trousers, and crafted a set of mouse scale snow shoes, you still don\u2019t have long before you start to freeze.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tExpert, exclusive gaming analysis\t\t\t<\/p>\n Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter<\/a> for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Eating food helps. The mushrooms you forage from the forest floor give your hunger bar a small bump in the right direction, and you can get a bigger boost by cooking them on your stove; once you\u2019ve rebuilt it, what\u2019s even better is Aunt Betulina\u2019s pies, which provide a range of other temporary buffs. Although, for reasons we won\u2019t spoil, it might be best not to get too used to them.<\/p>\n Developed by Danish studio River Creek, Winter Burrow looks like a hand-illustrated children\u2019s book, its imagery charming and realistic. Your mouse leaves small footprints in the snow, which comes in handy when it\u2019s time to retrace your steps, because there\u2019s no map, and while lovely to look at it\u2019s not always obvious where you can and can\u2019t walk, its signposting subtle or often absent.<\/p>\n That can be stressful when you\u2019re about to freeze to death, or if you\u2019ve wandered a long way from your front door without enough provisions for the journey. That\u2019s not so unusual, because when you start the game you have a paltry nine inventory slots, and three of those are taken up by your axe, shovel, and pick axe, all of which are essential for scavenging. And that\u2019s before you\u2019ve packed a snack, which can also prove important for survival.<\/p>\n \t\t It\u2019s possible to bring pre-crafted kindling with you, so you can light bonfires in wayside fireplaces and warm yourself up in emergencies, but even once your inventory\u2019s been expanded using a hand-knitted backpack or two, its slots remain precious. We certainly never bothered bringing kindling with us, despite unlocking the further ability to start a fire anywhere, with the lack of space easily outweighing the modest safety net it provides.<\/p>\n Winter Burrow includes a hint of Metroidvania, so as you acquire crafting recipes for better equipment, by doing favours for the woodland animals you meet, you\u2019ll find access to the forest extending accordingly. Smashed boulders or newly cleared roads open paths that had previously been unavailable. In those new areas you\u2019ll start to find aggressive biting ants and more complex scenery, that can be tricky to find your way out of unless you pay particular attention to landmarks on your way in.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also come to lament your mouse\u2019s puny stamina bar, which expires after a few chops with your axe or just a few seconds of running. It may be in keeping with his diminutive stature, but it does mean everything takes longer than you\u2019d like, which is especially true when your body temperature\u2019s getting dangerously low and you\u2019re a long way from home.<\/p>\n In spite of its pretty visuals, you can\u2019t escape the feeling its balance isn\u2019t quite right. You get cold and hungry too quickly, and while certain foods add to your defence or make stamina drop less precipitously, their effects are small, don\u2019t last long, and your inventory\u2019s so limited that you rarely want to bring extraneous items. It makes managing exploration more fraught and fiddly than it needs to be.<\/p>\n The animals you meet all have distinctive personalities, and it may be the only game we\u2019ve ever played with a \u2018Yes, please\u2019 button to confirm you want to save and quit, but Winter Burrow could have done with more polish to make its gameplay live up to the high bar set by its art department.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tWinter Burrow review summary\t\t\t<\/p>\n In Short: A cute woodland survival game that looks like an illustrated children\u2019s book but has a few too many rough edges to make full use of its charming setting.<\/p>\n Pros: Family friendly setting and protagonists, with a good sense of progress from exploration and equipment unlocks. Interesting characters and wonderful art style and visuals.<\/p>\n Cons: Managing hunger and cold take up too much of your time. The absence of a map gets more troubling as you progress and the lack of inventory space prevents other systems from being as useful as they could be.<\/p>\n Score: 6\/10<\/p>\n Formats: Xbox Series X\/S (reviewed), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC *available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one<\/p>\n \t\t Email\u00a0gamecentral@metro.co.uk<\/a>, leave a comment below,\u00a0follow us on Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n To submit Inbox letters and Reader\u2019s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our\u00a0Submit Stuff page here<\/a>.<\/p>\n For more stories like this,\u00a0check our Gaming page<\/a>.<\/p>\n Arrow Arrow Arrow![\"Winter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SEI_274087049-eecc.jpg\")
\n\t\tKnitting is an important survival skill (Noodlecake)<\/p>\n
Price: \u00a317.59*
Publisher: Noodlecake
Developer: Pine Creek Games
Release Date: 12th November 2025
Age Rating: 7<\/p>\n![\"Winter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SEI_274086803-90e0.jpg\")
\n\t\tIt\u2019s even worse for mouses (Noodlecake)<\/p>\n
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