What I tend to appreciate most about the indie game space as a whole is that it’s full of unexpected combinations. Sometimes that takes the form of what feels like the creation of entirely new subgenres in their own right, as you have with the case of a game like Vampire Survivors, mixing up more than a few elements into one package that proved to be quite addictive. Typically when I think of a modifier that you can put in front of any known genre to make something different I think of roguelikes, but it’s starting to appear that the term cozy is starting to establish itself as the more relaxed ying to the roguelike difficulty yang.

In the case of Winter Burrow I find the combination particularly challenging, trying to “cozify” a survival game. Considering that I normally find these titles to be a bit of a chore, often needing to worry about the minutia of finding materials and trying to craft your way to success while everything in the game works against you, trying to make it somehow pleasant feels like a tall order. The thing is, I think Winter Burrow actually does a superb job at it. While it certainly helps that you’ll be playing as a pretty adorable little mouse, trying to restore the family home bit by bit, all while trying to survive the cold winter weather, the toning down of the normal survival experience goes beyond the surface level. 

Make no mistake, just because the genre has been made more friendly doesn’t mean that it’s easy. You’ll still need to be very concerned with getting lost and either succumbing to the elements or some particularly aggressive bugs perhaps. The thing is, the solution to that is to knit yourself some cute pieces of snow gear that will help you stay warm longer, and maybe brew up some tea and biscuits to take with you on particularly long walks. You are able to take things at your own pace, to be sure, but in order to succeed you will need to take some chances, venturing out pretty far in search of better supplies and to meet up with some other forest denizens who’ll help you out with crucial information and new things you can make, helping you make breakthroughs and advance the story forward little by little. When it comes to survival titles I can’t think of anything else even remotely like this. It somehow manages to retain many of the critical elements of the genre, but tones it down in a few ways and puts a cute face on it that may be able to broaden the appeal to new audiences, who didn’t have a compelling reason to give it a shot to this point.