A mouse and its eagerness to rebuild its burrow after a tragedy make a children's tale become pure survival.
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Winter Burrow presents itself from the start as a children’s tale that becomes almost unforgettable from the first lines. With a sad and uplifting story, the Danish team at Pine Creek Games with Noodlecake in publishing, take on the task of creating a survival title within the framework of a narrative for children, something that, at the very least, deserves many points for originality.
The protagonist of this story decides to return, after the death of his parents, drained of energy from working in the mines of the big city, to the burrow where he grew up. Great is his disappointment when he sees that his childhood home is absolutely run down and that he will have to repair it almost entirely.
Our beloved mouse will meet several characters with different stories, including his aunt, who quickly suffers a merciless attack by an owl, whom he will have to help in order to make his way through the adventure.
I invite you to join me in turning the pages of this magical story that has morals everywhere, a hint of sadness, and a trail of smiles that will manage to bring a smile to your face. Let’s get started.
Technical Aspect
Following the aesthetic of children’s tales, Winter Burrow’s graphics are hand-painted in each frame, which immerses the player in the game’s atmosphere in a pure way. The only downside to this aspect is that I feel the art had potential to expand much further and is limited by the game’s own setting, situated in winter, which makes everything tinted in shades of white, gray, or brown.
In terms of sound, I must say that the music that accompanies the game is very well chosen and, for the most part, orchestrated by wind instruments that give the game a somewhat melancholic ambiance. The rhythm changes suddenly to a more intense track when there are enemies on screen, and this variation conveys the anxiety of immediate action to the player. The downside to this point is that the tracks, over time, become somewhat repetitive and can become tiresome; it wouldn’t have been bad to add a wider range of melodies considering the game’s duration.
The sound effects in general are sufficient without being outstanding, but given that it’s a children’s game and especially since it’s molded based on a tale, I feel the absence of a narrator in the cinematics, if not essential, I think it would have been very beneficial.
In terms of localization, the game is completely in Spanish in its Iberian variant with great work by the professionals who handled the title, making special use of diminutives to convey that factor of tenderness that accentuates the characters that make up this story.
Gameplay
The main objective of the title is to repair the burrow and furnish it, but to do so, the dear mouse that stars in the story will have to go through a series of perils; he will meet different characters in the adventure and will have to, basically, explore a vast world to collect elements, ingredients, and recipes that will allow him to build various furniture or cook different dishes.
Exploration is the main activity of the game, and despite this, the title does not have a map. I understand that this is because the player is forced to follow their own footsteps and this enhances the feeling of loneliness and isolation or forces the observation of certain elements on the screen to traverse certain paths; however, for someone like me who has a terrible sense of orientation and was traumatized by the first Metroid game, not having a visual guide of where you are is a significant omission. Especially in this case, since the player will have to constantly move from one point to another to manufacture different things on the workbench, located in the burrow, so remembering the paths to where you need to go and come back becomes a rather tedious exercise at some point.
The limitations of exploration in this case are three bars that appear on the screen constantly. One represents health, another represents food, and last but not least: heat, the fourth bar is resistance that is consumed when hitting or running. And it’s that the entire title takes place in a forest in winter, so the mouse suffers the effects of the weather like no one else. Being outdoors or far from a bonfire, the protagonist begins to suffer from the cold, especially at night, and if not remedied, can lose health and eventually life.
To mitigate the merciless attack of winter, some sets can be woven as elements are gathered and recipes are obtained, which takes a good amount of time. In addition to improving clothing and footwear, better backpacks can be woven that will help carry more items in the inventory, whose space, even maximized, is quite scarce and requires some strategy.
In the burrow, tools can be improved to peck at harder stones, cut down more robust trees, and excavate deeper sites. At the same time, two staircases that lead to the first floor of the burrow and the basement can also be repaired, the latter ideal for harvesting mushrooms and other herbs that can be eaten directly or used as ingredients for more succulent dishes that, in turn, provide heat and restore larger portions of the health bar.
The workbench also allows for the creation of various furniture, which, although many of them have a merely decorative function, some are also vital for the storage of items, such as the closet or chests.
In terms of difficulty, I could say that Winter Burrow is designed for a children’s audience, so the enemies, i.e., insects of various sizes in this delivery, do not present a great challenge, nor do the spiders that are the main antagonists of the story, so the continue screen will not be one that you see often, that’s for sure.
The greatest difficulty, perhaps, lies in the absence of an on-screen guide that indicates the next immediate action to take, which somewhat contradicts the idea of having children as the main audience, since the tutorial is very brief and lets go of your hand very quickly.
Duration
Winter Burrow is not an excessively short game; we can talk about 9 hours being necessary to finish the story, although the net playtime is a bit misleading, since to advance, several round trips will be required between the burrow and specific points in the scenario.
Conclusion
A mouse that seeks to make his childhood home shine again, loneliness, helping others, and surviving adversity are worthy topics for any work, whether it’s a book, a movie, or, as in this case, a video game. Winter Burrow is a game loaded with proven elements that appear in a framework that explodes in originality, ideal for playing with the little ones at home, as a family, or simply to enjoy an original title that knows how to take advantage of certain commandments of the survival genre.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do; you can try it out starting November 12th without any additional cost if you have a Game Pass subscription.
We thank Xbox Spain for the material provided to carry out this analysis.
Translator and video game localiser with a passion for retro titles and simulators. He has never let go of a controller since he was given an Atari 2600. He collaborates with different developers in the localisation of their titles into Spanish through Camelot Translations.
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