Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth Review: Adorable Existentialism

There are many things I remember about growing up in Eastern Europe, and one of them was the warmth of reading different children's stories from neighbouring regions. A common element in the childhood of generations of young Slavs was Moomin. The Finnish cuties were passed on in books, but now are more frequent in cartoons, clothing, toys, and, more topically, video games.

I love cozy games, and digging into something so refreshingly plucked from my childhood was something I couldn’t pass up. I did feel a sense of dread that the setting would be in wintertime rather than a Finnish summer, which would target more pleasant things like the summer solstice, but you can’t have it all in this life.

Snow, Snow Everywhere

It has to be said that once you start Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth, it makes winter feel whimsical and fun (unlike the grey slosh I actively remember), scratching the right itches of nostalgia and childhood bewilderedness at the first sight of tall snow.

As you wake up with Moomin, you are brought to a white winter filled with cold, enormous snow-covered bushes, and you have to dig your way out of them as the game progresses. The story is a soft mystery where you have to find out what happened, why Moomin has woken up (crucially, without Moominpapa and Moominmamma), and how to bring everything back to normal.

If it wasn’t obvious enough, the fact that Moomin does not enjoy winter resonated with me as well as his lines about how everything is dead, quiet, and how he hopes everyone else wakes up because it is so grim. Me too, buddy. This game made me feel vindicated that even my little buddy was on my side of the seasonal war.

Walking through the snow leaves trails and persistent footsteps, which remind me of running around on snow-covered roads, fields, and leaving marks and drawings everywhere. The game has got to be one of the prettiest cozy games I’ve seen, with its art direction staying beautifully faithful to how Moomin and the other characters appear in other media.

Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth is entirely based around the concept of winter, death, and renewal. The game does a great job of capturing the melancholy and addressing more philosophical aspects around the passage of time. Of course, it does so with a Nordic mentality, which may seem more comfortable with somber or grim themes than you’d find elsewhere.

Putting my biases about winter aside for a moment, the game does a fantastic job capturing the lulls of a pleasant winter's day, together with the emotions and whimsy you'd associate with it. Plus, it's very rewarding to see childhood favorites pop up here and there, like our dearest Too Ticky.

Too Ticky was modelled after Tuulikki PIetilä, the lifelong partner of Moomin’s creator Tove Jansson. She shows up in her usual attire, with a stripy long-sleeved shirt and a beret. Her presence in the game is a great nod to these two great women who are central to the franchise. Also, knowing that I grew up on beloved characters created by a queer woman is amazing, even if I only found that out recently.

Of Snowballs and Puzzles

Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth has beautifully drawn graphics, and they help bring up the activities you perform in the story: snowball fights, solving puzzles, and a lot of searching for specific items. Not even Moomin is safe from the fetch quest.

The difficulty of snowball fights doesn’t really escalate as the game progresses, but that leaves them as cute, gimmicky features that are fun enough to not bore but also not frustrating, as losing a snowball fight can be embarrassing at any age. As someone with deep-seated traumas about Blitzball in Final Fantasy X, it was nice to see a fair minigame for a change.

Getting the upper hand in snowball fights is simple enough, and I found my flow by hiding behind bushes, then ambushing Little My (that Hell Let Loose: Vietnam experience is paying off). She will drop her snowball if you hit her first, so aggressiveness is key.

Progressing the story requires finding different items scattered around the world, and the tasks just keep piling up, making Moomin complain that everyone wants something from him on top of the winter blues. With a few exceptions, Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth makes finding items simple while making the journey cosy.

I did have a bit of a panic attack during my first run because the game doesn't exactly specify whether it has an autosave, or if you need to unlock a saving spot somewhere.

After sinking three hours into it, I was starting to panic: since there's no visible autosave icon, will poor Moomin lose his progress if I decide to play Pokémon? I spent another hour poking around to see whether there was a save point I missed, but the game has an autosave after all. Crisis averted.

Another point lacking in clarity is the item requirements. The game is not super clear about how many of each item you need to have for certain parts of the story, which led to a wild goose chase before realizing my mistake. If you've ever stood next to a Finn at a bus stop, you'll know they are people of few words, so maybe those communication issues are down to that.

Warming Things Up

Hyper Games hit it out of the park with a Moomin adventure that's accessible for newcomers but also bursting with nostalgia, whether you are a child or were raised on Moomin like me.

I initially worried whether the short number of hours to complete it would make it feel empty or rushed, but with the tasks and the pacing, it all comes together nicely. The game mechanics do end up feeling a bit repetitive, and the snowball fights are predictable as long as you throw snowballs fast.

I cannot speak for someone who isn't a Moomin fan, but given how popular the franchise is and how faithful this is to the source material, one can assume that anyone who has never heard of Moomin but craves a nice dose of cosy and whimsy will be all over this.

This is particularly relevant for kids, since the game is fit for all ages without locking itself as too childish or too mature. You get to kick winter's snow, have some approachable philosophical discussions, and dive into an adorable world. Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth feels like a great gateway to introduce the little ones to the characters and hopefully get them hooked on the books and cartoons.

By playing Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth, we can finally crack why Finland keeps getting appointed as the happiest nation on Earth.

Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth does what it came to do: criticize the injustice of winter existing at all. The game makes you reflect on existential dread, dedications to your partner, chores, and the adorableness of life as a whole. Some controls and mechanics could have been explained better, but this is a great, snowy, cozy game that adds some variety to a genre that's oversaturated with farm life.