It's putting Snufkin to shame! Review of Moomintroll Winter's Warmth 🩵

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2qGg1j-9u8&t=1s

In 2024 Hyper Gamers gave us the cozy and rebel filled game Snufkin, which was five hours with wonderful gameplay and massive fun, but that was sadly lacking in accessibility for a game aimed to be for all ages. It was due to that, that I was a bit sceptical when Hyper Gamers sent me a code for their newest game, but oh boy did they surprise!

Hi everyone, my name is Arevya, and I’m a disabled and chronically ill gamer and accessibility consultant, and today I will review the accessibility in Moomintroll Winter's Warmth.

Moomintroll Winter's Warmth is developed by Hyper Games and was published on 27^th of April by Hyper Games and Kakehashi Games. It is the second game from the developers set in the wonderful and charming world of the Moomintroll, inspired by the delightful and brilliant stories made by Tove Janssons. In this game you play as Moomin himself when he one day wakes up too early from his winter slumber, to find out that he seems to be all alone in a world he barely recognizes as his own. Covered in vail of powdering snow, he has to be brave and set out on an adventure to figure out what has happened to him, and his friends. And in true Moomin fashion this is a game made for children, but with dialog heavy enough to make us adult stop and think. And I absolutely adored it.

Settings:

I played the steam version, and as soon as I launched the game, I was met with a cozy indicator from Steam that I should sit back with a controller and relax, which was a great start.

When the game boots up you are met with a one window you need to click through before you see the start screen where you have access to start the game or check out all the settings. And I said it before and I say it again, pleeeease every developer remember to do this, as many disabled gamers need to access the settings BEFORE starting the game, to be able to play your game in a safe and comfortable way.

In the settings you find general options, controller options and accessibility options, which is also accessible for you while moving around in game, but sadly not when locked in a dialog or a cut scene. The settings are also not explained, which in the start made me quite unsure what effect they actually had, and if I needed to turn them on or not. And this makes the setting in them self a bit inaccessible, as it is hard to know if you need something or not, if you are not actually explained what it does for you. It also makes it so that people miss out on turning them on, when needed later in game, as it is hard to remember something you did not understand in the first place, which was  something that almost happened to me. Which is a shame because they were THIS close to getting the settings perfectly right when it comes to accessibility.

On boarding:

When you start a new game, it starts with this cute cut scene which has button prompt on screen telling you what to push to progress the conversation. And this is something you will see throughout all of the game, that most interactions are indicated on screen, making it quite easy to understand how to play the game. From progressing the dialog to using a tool, it will indicate how you do it and when you can do it.

And if you ever forget what button does what when playing on controller, there is its own tab when pressing start that shows a picture of your controller, indicating what button to use. Tho I do wish this was just in general displayed when pressing start and also available for keyboard, but now I’m being nitpicky.

Getting on boarded into the game is quite easy as every quest get its own pop up at the side of the screen, telling you quite clearly what to do next. The game in general is quite easy to understand and would be a great starting game both for young children and people new to gaming.

Audio accessibility:

The most impressive accessibility in this game is the audio accessibility, as nothing in this game relies on audio queue alone, as all of this information is also indicated by visual animation. So from characters knocking on your door, to sorry-oo howling in the wind, every sound you need to notice has some kind of indicator like this wave form of sour notes.

Making this game perfect and completely accessible for Deaf and Hard of Hearing gamers.

You can also change all the volume for individual sound with the audio sliders in the settings, giving you full control over the master volume, music volume, sound effects volume, ambience volume, voice volume and UI volume. If I have any note on these settings, it would be to give us a sound examples of WHAT sound these indicate, but they are really good just the way they are.

Vision accessibility:

On the other side, vision accessibility is where the game is sadly lacking the most, as this game is not accessible for most blind players. There is no text to speech option and no screen narrators.

The dialogue in the game is also not read out loud of you, so even if you are able to play the gameplay, you will miss out the story if you can not read the text, and I have to say that the story in this game gives it a second layer I would not be without.

But on the bright side, the games offer you to turn on large text, that makes it somewhat larger and easier to see. If this is enough for anyone with reduced vision or who are blind to be able to play, will be up to the individual, but I do appreciate it being there. A way for it to be improved would be to have a text scaling possibility, like the one we see in atom fall, but that do expect a whole lot more of work from both the programmers and designers, and something that often needs to be determined from the start of game development. But hopefully we will see something like this in the next game from Hyper Gamers, now that I have put it out there in the universe.

I also want to just quickly mention that if you want to you can use your system cursor, instead of the one in game, giving you’re the possibility to have one that you can see easier. But if you change the size of the cursor in the settings of your PC, that will also make the in-game cursor larger, even if you do not have this setting turned on. So that is a tip on how to make the cursor as large as needed to make your game comfortable.  

When the come to the design of the game I was a bit sceptical when first starting the game, as if Moomins white fur would completely blend into the white background, but luckily the devs did add a smart design choice which was giving him a soft outline. This was clever, but I do whish that the developer had taken it one step further and given us the possibility to make that outline even harder, or in best case scenario, the possibility to change colour of the outline. If they had done so, this game would have been massively more accessible for low vision gamers.

The HUD and UI do also have this outline, making them easier to see, but you have no possibility to scale them up. For the most part they stay the same but do in some cases get a bit larger to accommodate for the “larger text” settings. The only time in game that it can be troublesome to see the HUD, is a small part in the start of the game where ice crystals form on the screen. Sadly, there is no way to turn this off, but luckily I can only remember it happened once in the whole game.

Motor accessibility:

Moomintroll Winter's Warmth can be played both with mouse and keyboard, and with a controller. Since this is a steam game, anything that steam recognize as a controller will also work, example the Xbox Adaptive controller or Xbox adaptive joystick.

The game relies on you to use 11 keys while playing with a keyboard, and the joystick and 7 buttons when playing with a controller. You can get away with a one handed controller like this when doing gameplay, but navigation in menu and settings gets a bit complicated when you do not have the access to a regular controller.

All buttons, both on keyboard and controller, can easily be remapped in the settings.

To my surprise there are actually two more motor accessibility options in the game. The first is the possibility to turn on single tap instead of press and hold buttons for interactions, making it so for example when making a large snowball, you can push the button once, roll the snowball where you want it, and push the button again to let the snowball go. The second is the possibility to turn on bigger shovel radius, making you take away considerable more snow each time you shovel snow.

I’m so grateful for both of these options, as playing games with arthritis can sometimes be a struggle, especially when every movement and button press gives you pain. This game is quite click heavy, so having options like this, that greatly reduces the need for that is a huge win in my books.

There are some parts of the game where you have to aim a snowball, but it does not require you to hold down any buttons to make a snowball, if you have the tap instead of hold setting on. The aim itself never requires you to hold a button down and it is really easy, as it automatic snap to the closest target. If you are struggling with use and aim of the snowball when in minigames with life or time, I recommend you to enable the slow moving characters and simplified snowball fights.

Luckily there are no Quick Time Events in this game.

Cognitive accessibility

And talking about quick time events, let take a look at the last accessibility category, cognitive accessibility. By design, Moomintroll Winter's Warmth is a slow-paced and calm game experience, and it let’s you work out how to play the game in your own terms.

There are no traditional difficulty settings in the game, but there are many options that can help make the game easier if you struggle. I already mentioned the possibility to enabled slow moving characters, and simplified snowball fight, both things that make the mini games easier. There is also the possibility to turn on option that stops Sorry-oo from running away when you are facing the wolves, and you can skip the rolling snowball challenges all together.

I also really enjoyed seeing that the wind challenges in late game could BOTH have reduced speed, giving you almost twice as long between each gust, and be completely turned off, making it easier to move through parts of the game.

Only problem with these options is, as mentioned before, they are not explained in any way in the settings, so I sadly are not 100% sure when these options are in affect or not, as some wind will still persist in the early stages of the game even with the option turned on.

If you struggle with dyslexia there are some options that will help you as well. First one is dyslexic font, which is a font that is said to make it easier to read for people with this disability, but there are no science behind it to back it up, and I myself struggles more to read when it is on. Still, I have seen many other people say it helps them, so it is nice that it is a possibility. When I played the game with the dyslexic- AND large font it did have some clipping issues in some of the menus, but I assume this will be fixed in an update if it isn’t already.

Second setting that can help people with dyslexia or any other disability that affects how you read is the possibility to make speech bubbles last longer on screen. This is especially good option for the bubbles that randomly pops up while moving freely around in the world, but when there are speech bubbles that lock you in place, it can be a bit too much sometimes.

And last but not least, if you are afraid of getting lost in the game, don’t worry, ever step of the game gives you quest marks that are both written down in your journal and marked on you map. And if you ever wonder how you get back to a place, you can always just mark it on your map and you get this little finger on your screen telling you which way to go.

All in all

To end this video I have to say that all in all, Hyper Games has come a long way with the accessibility in Moomintroll Winter's Warmth from their previous game Snufkin.

They seem to understand better now the need for accessibility even in games that are cozy and with a slow pace. This is especially important in a game that is aimed to be played by children, as they might not have learned the same skill set as an older gamer. And I can for sure now say that Moomintroll Winter's Warmth are a nice way for new gamers, and disabled gamer, to get introduced to this hobby.

Especially impressive is the fact that this game is completely playable without any need for sound, and the understanding of cognitive accessibility, which is often overlooked in todays gaming world.

But there is still a way to go. I’m missing more advanced settings like screen readers and better text size for blind gamer, and even more simple step like having a dedicated accessibility page available on their webpage. The latter is something that is easily still possible to add, and something I do hope to see in the future. Remember, the best day to start adding accessibility was yesterday, the second best day to start is today.

And that was it, all in all I would give the accessibility in Moomintroll Winter's Warmth a 7 out of 10, it is absolutely worth checking out, but it do have some barriers that makes it not possible to play for some.

Please let me know in the comments what you think of this game, and which game you wish for me to check out next. Bye.