• Tue. Feb 18th, 2025

Winter Burrow is one early 2025 Xbox Game Pass title we shouldn’t overlook

Byadmin

Jan 19, 2025



Xbox Game Pass’ upcoming Winter Burrow launches in early 2025, and I can’t wait to play it! Sure, we have some huge upcoming Game Pass games on the way this year — Avowed and Fable, for starters! — but we also look pretty nicely set up when it comes to indie games. Of these, the cozy survival indie game is firmly locked on my radar as a must-play when it arrives.Heidi’s Highlight — Winter Burrow will join Game Pass as a day-one additionThe Winter Burrow achievements aren’t here just yet, but we’ll give you the latest when they do land!Release window: early 2025Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PCWinter Burrow is a cozy survival game about a mouse rebuilding their childhood burrow. Remember Tails of Iron? That was another beautifully hand-drawn game with a focus on the smaller woodland creatures of the world (rats, in this case). It also went pretty darn hard on brutal, violent combat. This game isn’t going down the same bloody path, but it’s still been a tough life for its little mouse protagonist.Their move to the city was followed by the death of their parents. This prompted them to sell everything and risk it all to return to their childhood home in the country, only to find it in ruins and their aunt missing. It’s an interesting start to a cozy game. I do love the “start from scratch” storylines where you’re asked to rebuild from nothing, but I am really curious about how Winter Burrow is going to combine coziness with survival elements. Survival will be tough, too: the gameplay we’ve seen so far shows that you’ll need to factor in cold resistance while making yourself better equipment (shoes made out of leaves, and so on), but thicker clothes, such as a knitted sweater, also apparently impede your swiftness in dashing. Other wildlife plays a part, too, with friends and foes alike to be found in the wilderness.Pine Creek Games’ CEO and creative director Benjamin Salqvist even lists 7 Days to Die as the first inspiration for Winter Burrow. Salqvist adds that a desire for a more “forgiving” survival game went into it, and even describes Winter Burrow as a “hybrid” of games like 7 Days to Die and Animal Crossing — with more exploration and the like.Those cozy elements are evident in the game’s other activities: you knit sweaters in your little armchair, decorate your home, and bake nice delicacies. That first gameplay shows that even something as small as first lighting a fire makes such a difference in bringing coziness into the room, with a warm golden glow instead of bleak wintry light. That fight to rebuild your home and survive the wilderness outside, in order to enjoy a cozy safe home on the inside, looks like it’ll lead to a delightful gameplay loop.We saw how well base-building and venturing out into the world worked for Cult of the Lamb. While that was more dungeon runs than survival exploration (and Winter Burrow is definitely going for more traditional cuteness, rather than the haha-got-you-this-game-is-actually-wonderfully-messed-up route), the melding of two core mechanics was a real winner there.“Survival games” tend to suggest gruelling survival experiences with brutal encounters and a hard, desperate attempt to keep ahead of the world’s dangers. Couple that with a wintry setting and the discomfort and difficulty goes up. Indeed, our round-up of the best winter games on Xbox includes several survival games of that calibre. With that in mind, I can’t wait to see how Winter Burrow introduces cozy, welcoming elements into the genre — knitted sweaters and all. What do you think? Will you be giving woodland survival a go? Let us know in the comments!



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