Making A. A. Milne’s adorable little Winnie the Pooh free for use by the public was always going to be chaos, but I never quite expected anything like Winnie’s Hole. A roguelike horror game from Twice Different, the developers of Ring of Pain, Winnie’s Hole is a straight-up weird, yet vaguely intriguing, take on the classic animated character.
“We know that change comes from within,” says the trailer’s narrator in a pleasant, playful tone, that’s both nostalgia inducing and calming. “Try a change beneath the skin,” he continues, his voice warping into a twisted, demonic version of itself while a sorrowful Winnie stares woefully into a glistening lake. That, my friends, is what greets you when you first check out Winnie’s Hole.
“You play as a virus, spreading disease, exploring and expanding piece by piece. Transform your host, adapt your form.” As the trailer continues Pooh mutates into a creature that will genuinely stalk the shadows of my nightmares, bloating, while growing additional, contorted limbs. When a poor little rabbit gets in his way, he spews purple gunk from his stomach, corrupting the creature in a quest to “propagate.”
You infect Winnie using different building blocks, which you put together to transmit the virus throughout his cells. As you corrupt, you can upgrade the Hundred Acre Wood’s most famous face with things like a Stunning Arm and Berserk Arm, each of which offer different traits and abilities.
I sense you asking whether or not this game is actually real, and the answer is yes, yes it is. Do I need it in my life? I’m not sure. Did I think I’d be writing this article this morning? Absolutely not. It’s certainly an innovative approach to the age-old tale of Winnie the Pooh, I’ll give them that.
“This story is not what it was,” teases our demonic narrator, and it’s certainly a far cry from the cheerful little Disneyland Florida ride. If you’re looking to terrify yourself in the near future, you can wishlist the game on Steam.
There’s no release date for Winnie’s Hole at the moment, but Twice Different claims early access is coming in 2023. It is the perfect spooky season game, after all.
If you’re looking to pass the time while you wait for this monstrosity to crawl out of the shadows, we have a list of other roguelike games that you may enjoy in the meantime, as well as a rundown of the best fantasy games if you’re looking for something, y’know, not messed up.