Thank you Twice Different for sending us an early access copy of this game!

Winnie's Hole is a title I am going to do my darndest to say as few times as possible in this review. It's Winnie-the-Pooh meets body horror in a deckbuilding roguelite with Darkest Dungeon visual aesthetics. You play as a virus growing inside of Winnie as he walks through the forest. As he travels, he is repeatedly attacked by both old friends and other woodland critters who are rightfully horrified by the unsettling things happening to their furry friend.

A single completion of the first run reveals that a plague doctor and his rodent sidekicks are using Winnie as some kind of viral testing host, as they can extract the virus at the end of the run and turn Winnie back to normal. The plague doctor tells Winnie this is all in pursuit of curing the virus in others; Winnie will sometimes stumble upon other woodland residents who appear to be suffering from similar mutations. If Winnie wants to save them, he needs to repeatedly go through different areas of the wood and allow the virus to mutate in different ways to help the doctor find his "cure".

I want to make it clear that I have very strong opinions on this game using one of the most wholesome cartoon icons of the last century for this dark and disturbing story and imagery. I will say, it took some work on my part to get over it enough to fully enjoy what this game has to offer. After my first run, I was just glad it was over and I could begin writing down my thoughts. Going back on the second day, though, when the shock factor had worn off and I could focus more on the actual gameplay, the more fun I had.

While it took a little getting used to, there is something interesting going on here. You pick a starting mutation for the virus that loads your deck with a series of cards that perform different actions when used in battle as well as a perk and a combat ability. From there, you alternate between bouts of combat and exploration inside Winnie's body as the virus mutates. In both gameplay segments, Winnie uses the same set of (usually) 3 polyominoes to either select cards that are laid out on his brain (what the game calls the "Brain board") to select attacks, or to traverse the inside of his body and reach resources for further mutations. During combat, you start out being able to use any of Winnie's polyominoes to select combat cards, but then cannot use it again until you have used all of them once. In his body, you can use each one once, and then the virus takes the path to whichever node is closest to the last polyomino you set down.

After each combat, the player is awarded with a Perk, a Mutation, or some other passive bonus. Perks give passive bonuses during combat, like physical attacks healing Winnie if the opponent is bleeding or physical damage being converted to a shield for Winnie. Some Perks also provide some bonus for selecting squares outside of the Brain board, so even using oddly shaped polyominoes can provide extra benefit even if they only select one or two cards. Mutations are the cards that get added to the deck, giving Winnie access to new attacks. Other passive bonuses are things like giving a single card in Winnie's deck a modifier, like triggering multiple times on use or being used automatically without having to select it.

Visually, Winnie's Hole appears to borrow a lot of its art and animation style from Darkest Dungeon. The description on Steam says the "gritty art [is] inspired by old school Nickelodeon and Brothers' Grimm fairytales." The animations are pretty simplistic, all told. Obviously, Winnie is a horrifying mess half of the time, and he's not the only one. Some creatures get very similar mutations in combat, while others, like Owl, just become raging beasts intent on stopping Winnie in his tracks.

As for sound design, the music mostly alternates between a melancholy track that plays during the exploration sections and a bass-y, muted track that plays during combat. The sound design is fine, if the sound effects from the body horror elements don't completely gross you out. In fact, putting on a headset while playing really emphasized just how...squishy...sounding some of the effects are.

Moving on to stability, I remind the reader that Winnie's Hole is currently in early access. That being said, I did notice some issues with controller support and gameplay, though they were relatively minor. Firstly, Winnie's Hole has native controller support; however, if you turn on Steam Controller input, then your input gets doubled. This was an issue for me only because I use an SNES-layout controller, so the A/B and X/Y on-screen prompts were opposite to my actual controller layout. When I attempted to turn on Steam Input so I could swap them, it basically made the game entirely unplayable. I opted to stick with keyboard and mouse after that, just to avoid confusion on my part, and because I couldn't be bothered to hook up a different controller during my first session. On my second, I went with a DualShock 4, and all of the correct icons appeared automatically throughout the game, so native Xbox and Playstation controllers seem to work just fine. Another bug was with one of the Perks, which was supposed to cause the first physical attack each combat to inflict the Bleed status; it did not work on the Uppercut and Punch Mutations, despite them being physical attacks. Finally, when pressing "Quit" from the Main Menu to close the game, a popup which confirms that you would like to exit the game appears, but clicking "Quit" in the popup doesn't actually close the game. I had to Alt+F4 my way out.

Where do I even begin on the moral elements of this game? You've got a psychopathic doctor lying to Winnie and using him as a guinea pig for his virus. Winnie doesn't really want to fight anyone, and is constantly talking with the enemies about how he'd still like to be friends with them; it doesn't even seem like Winnie has control over his extra body parts, from the way the dialog goes. Yet if there were no combat, the virus wouldn't mutate, and the doctor wouldn't get what he wants. Likewise, if the scared woodland critters would just stay out of Winnie's way instead of attacking him, there's very little chance anyone would be getting hurt. So the violence aspect here is bizarre, to say the least.

I didn't note any language during my time playing Winnie's Hole (with the exception of one Perk being called "Test Tickle"), and the virus seems to be purely "dark science" as opposed to anything occultic or supernatural. And while there is a bleed mechanic and violence, it's not clear that Winnie ever actually "kills" anyone, considering everyone is as right as rain every time he starts a new run. He knocks people off into the stratosphere when they're defeated, but a cutscene during the battle with the plague doctor's rodent assistants shows the one just knocked into the ceiling, alive, conscious, and flashing a little X as we stare up at him from his bottom. Honestly, it's kind of amazing how a game so darkly-themed could have so little besides how disturbing it is to witness in terms of moral issues.

Winnie's Hole is a Steam-exclusive at the time of writing, but it's system requirements are extremely low. The game is only $14.99 on Steam, which isn't too bad for what it offers. At the moment, there are only two main paths, and I was able to complete them both in just about 5 hours of gameplay. However, there are a lot of unique strains, only around half of which I unlocked, so there is still plenty of replay potential just in what is currently released. In terms of gameplay, it's pretty fun. Body horror isn't my personal cup of tea, and the fact that it's poor Winnie-the-Pooh being taken on this particular journey is disturbing, but I have a feeling that's what the developers were going for. I definitely wouldn't recommend this to kids, but for more mature deckbuilding roguelite enthusiasts, this game kind of grows on you.

-maestro_dana