Winter's Warmth Is Beautiful And So Is Moomin

— All I know is that I'm me, and that I'm here now!

That phrase is said by a squirrel and how come that little rodent got life more figured out than I do.




It is impossible to overstate the kind of strength the Moominvalley can find in its simplicity, stories that tap the beauty and wonder of the mundane and natura, its own breed of magical realism.

Snufkin: Melody of Moomivalley got that, and Winter’s Warmth feels rather homogenous when it comes to how it feels to play and the ways in which it understood the series and shaped it through adaptation, but it’s also insane in how it differs in the ways it goes about in understanding what its source material can say about itself and the world it deeply loves.

It feels more linear than the already straight forward previous game did, but that mostly stems from having an actual pseudo-hub location, not a center piece in the literal sense of the world, but the Moomin home acts unequivocally like that, a home. Running errands around the rooms watching as it gets more populated and emptier from the perspective an accidental host is adorable and touching, the knowledge alone that it acts as an actual shelter fills you with more drive than any of the quest markers or maps could have hoped for, and if anything I think this game would have come out from the other side even better if it had way simpler indicators —this is ignoring the fact this is an experience intended for quite literally anyone to be able to play, and at that point me critiquing that kind of accessibility and quality of life add-ons sounds counterproductive, but I digress.

Re-enforcing this idea of a safe space in the middle of a valley that used to act as a haven is such an interesting yet fitting contrast; Melody of Moomivalley had the Park Ranger and the Cops to the present an external threat, something alien to the meadows that shaped them in ways that felt unnaturalistic and harmful, destruction and senseless intervention through means that go against the very spring.

Within the first 10 minutes of Winter’s Warmth, the cold takes a victim.

Or maybe not.

There’s no effort made to hide the innate cruelty of the snow, but in doing so, it also showcases it’s pure beauty; the same piles of snow that halt of obstruct are the same ones that offer small ponds of ground in which is easier to walk, a tactility that all of the snow shares and through which you slowly carve your own routes. This is not a game I expect everyone to have wildly different paths in, but it doesn’t need that kind of open-endedness when the action alone is so satisfying. Both in the previous game and in here, every step of progress is a victory, but it’s in Winter’s Warmth where that feeling is met with uncertainty, the possibility no problem has a defined end, that tomorrow will undo everything, that maybe you won’t see that strange wanderer ever again.

Faces blend together in the blizzard… but they are all friendly ones. And they remember through action.

Uncertainty is present even as the winter beings frolic around the fire and Little My pummels you with snowballs; things almost never go to plan, and yet the outcome is always smile inducing. There’s beauty in the snow itself, but there’s even more in the little fort two friends make to fight against the cold or the banter between Misabel and the Hemulen (which is like, one of the most fun interactions I’ve read in a game period), the beauty people fight to get out of that which is scary and unfriendly, even when their worst traits shine the darkest.

At least it means we all got stuff to go through, together.

The final note is something more concrete, the happiness of a sunny day and friends from a long while ago, but it’s hard to forget the mess that came before and how happy it made you feel between the moments you really wanted to cry.

I’ve only seen snow fall out the sky once —turns out that even more at the north were it always rains, the coast isn’t a good place for the drops of water to solidify—, but I’ve seen the kind of tale Winter’s Warmth is showing, I’ve felt the yearning from it to go away and remember the comfort of warmer days. But that warmth isn’t innate, and it knows it. And it knows how to show it through Moomin and his dorky friends. And it makes me happy because of it.

There’s something special hidden within its tactility, its quieter moments of re-treading past areas, the little growth Moomintroll goes through showcases in the beautiful animations contrasted in a world of beautiful, neatly cut drawings. I never doubted for a second that this team had the ability to make something touching and satisfying, but they had the option to pick an easier route that opted for self-referential story mixing and quote callbacks and re-using the base of their previous game had in its entirety. Instead, they chose sincerity.

They chose what makes Moomin feel like Moomin.

Thank you so much for reaching this point.