Winter Burrow finds the cozy middle ground between Don’t Starve and Mouse Guard

By Tomas Franzese Published April 8, 2025

When it comes to survival crafting games, ambitious 3D sandbox games like Minecraft, Rust, or Valheim are often the first titles to come to mind. That said, I’ve often found myself just as entertained by the strain of survival and crafting games inspired by Don’t Starve. While Klei Entertainment’s 2013 indie classic is pretty hardcore, a lot of games inspired by it have been more cozy in nature. I have an enjoyable time relaxing, exploring cute worlds, and crafting items in games like Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story or Cozy Grove.

Now, Pine Creek Games’ Winter Burrow will fill the cozy survival-crafting void. At a recent ID@Xbox digital event I attended, Pine Creek CEO and Creative Director Benjamin Salqvist wasn’t shy about bringing up survival games like Don’t Starve, but emphasized that Winter Burrow will be a less stressful, more laid-back take on that formula.

More specifically, Salqvist described Winter Burrow as “in between Don’t Starve and Animal Crossing.”After seeing the game in action during that digital event and going hands-on with it at GDC 2025, Winter Burrow has become one of my most anticipated games of the year.

While you couldn’t tell it at first glance, first-person zombie survival game 7 Days to Die served as the source of inspiration for the project that would eventually become Winter Burrow. “It’s funny because the first inspiration was playing 7 Days to Die and imagining how it would be playing as a woodland creature,” Salqvist explained. “Soon, I realized I wouldn’t make a 3D game that size, so I looked into a 2D game and then got inspired by Don’t Starve.”

The result is a cute adventure about a mouse who returns to a burrow his parents created long ago, only to find it in disarray. From there, players have to slowly improve and upgrade their burrow with resources while braving the winter storms surrounding it. All of this is realized with art style Salqvist directly credits Mouse Guard creator David Petersen with inspiring. Winter Burrow’s gorgeous art style has been improved even more since its first demo was released on Steam last year.

It now sports even more details and some pretty cozy-feeling lighting. Overall, this look lets Winter Burrow deftly switch between feeling chilly and warm depending on where the player is. The core gameplay loop of Winter Burrow isn’t a radical reinvention if you’ve played a crafting-focused game before. Resources like wood and stone are scattered across the forests surrounding the burrow, and players must collect those resources to craft things necessary for progression.

At first, you’re just picking up stuff on the ground, but before long, you’re crafting tools to gather resources faster and then using those crafted resources to improve the burrow or create new clothing for your mouse. As players improve their burrow, they’ll leave each day with boosted stats to help them venture further and weather the snowstorms they might encounter.

Players have health, hunger, and warmth meters to constantly monitor while out gathering resources, with warmth specifically being the one that depletes the fastest from my experience. The risk-reward gameplay loop of Winter Burrow comes from deciding when the right time to head back to the burrow is. To help with this, players’ footsteps will remain in the snow, a feature Pine Creek added after noticing players have been trying to use them to navigate back home.

Layer in mechanics like cooking on top of that, and Winter Burrow hits all the right notes as a cozy survival. It’s not a game I would’ve pegged as initially inspired by 7 Days to Die, but regardless, it is now one I’ll be keeping on my radar for the foreseeable future. If you enjoy Don’t Starve, cute animals, or cozy games, Winter Burrow should be on your radar as well.

Winter Burrow will be released for PC and Xbox Series X/S in 2025 and be an Xbox Game Pass title from day one. A demo of the game is available on Steam.