The Moomins are white sugar creatures plump with visceral fat and love, and Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson built them a perfect world when she created them in 1945. It’s not perfect in the sense that there is no pain – the cow-snouted Moomintrolls are capable of being as unhappy as the rest of us – but tragedy usually comes with a lesson. Life is unpredictable, but nature isn’t always, and it’s this philosophy that punches me in the nose when I play the Steam Next Fest demo for Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth.
The cozy puzzle adventure Winter’s Warmth is the spiritual sequel to Oslo-based studio Hyper Games’ first Moomin game adaptation, the devious, anti-authoritarian folk tale Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley. Like that narrative-rich game from 2024, Winter’s Warmth, due on April 27, seems to balance the watercolor whimsy of its landscapes with a Stoic’s commitment to temperance. Yes, the green leaves of the trees look blue and lovely in this weather – but don’t be upset when the wind breaks the branch over your head.
These are the kinds of tough cookies Moomintroll has to swallow when his hibernation suddenly ends early, leaving him without Moominpappa and Moominmamma’s guidance (and hot breakfast) for the first time in his young life. Eventually, he has to embrace the cold winter on a mission to help his friends welcome spring with a towering bonfire, but for now, I feel his trepidation when I ease the sensitive guy out of bed and into the cellar.
The furnace needs tending. A squirrel’s broken into the house, and it went rogue. It blew open the windows and knocked over everything else – even Moominmamma’s jam, a sticky red pulp now stuck to the floor, making the snow-kissed kitchen look like an episode of Law & Order.
But once he lights all the oil lamps and gets more confident, Moomin starts feeling sorry for the squirrel, which he scares into running back into a midnight snowstorm. So, even though he’s only a summer creature, Moomin follows his rodent friend into the dark.
I try not to get distracted by neither shimmering snow banks nor the frozen crystals collecting on my Steam Deck screen, a sign that Moomintroll is on the way to becoming Moominvanilla ice cream.
I’m in survivalist conditions. As efficiently as I can, I complete medium-difficulty environmental puzzles reminiscent of the Melody of Moominvalley, which never discouraged a confused roam around the map or two. Moomin looks like a cotton ball when he, at one point, slips and tumbles down a snowy hillside, but still, we continue on.
The squirrel’s tiny footsteps lead far into the forest, until they don’t. Then Moomin spots the creature, but Is this squirrel fucking dead?, is my first thought. The snow picks up Moomin tries to yank the squirrel off the ground, but it’s frozen on its back.
I’m shocked. Naive Moomintroll is in anguish. So, swiftly, his benevolent neighbor Too-Ticky whisks him away to her nearby bathing house, and to issue some advice: “Death is… part of life. The Lady of the Cold gives and takes.”
As heartbroken as I am about the squirrel I’ll never get to apologize to, I know Too-Ticky is right. Moments like this, of shocking honesty, thorns on the rose of an otherwise idyllic European fairytale, is exactly what made me love Hyper Games’ first trek into Moominvalley.
I’m thrilled the developer is taking the same bold approach to its “cozy game” Winter’s Warmth rather than capitulating to genre conventions, like false optimism. It’s more cozy, I think, to welcome the storm rather than hide from it.
I’ve been writing about new indie games for years, and these are the 10 best Steam Next Fest demos I recommend you play this weekend.
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