Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth hits PS5 on September 18

Hyper Games, the Norwegian indie studio behind Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, has announced that Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth launches on PlayStation 5 on September 18. It's the studio's second Moomin game, and this time Moomintroll himself takes the lead.

The story follows Moomintroll waking early from hibernation to find winter still gripping Moominvalley and his whole family still asleep. He sets out to bring spring back — and with it, his best friend Snufkin. Visually, Hyper Games went for a watercolor storybook look inspired by Tove Jansson's own artwork, blending 3D geometry with hand-painted 2D elements and custom Unity shaders to make it feel like watercolor soaking into paper, imperfections and all. Snow is a particular technical highlight: the terrain uses a deformable snow layer that reacts to Moomintroll's movement, giving it real weight rather than a flat surface. Sharp-eyed fans will find Easter eggs throughout — Hattifatteners and the Ancestor woven into a carpet, an X-ray of Moomintroll hanging in his bedroom, and the character Too-Ticky, whom Tove Jansson based on her real-life partner Tuulikki Pietilä.

The Moomins date back to 1945, when Jansson published the first story in the aftermath of World War II — deliberately building a world away from war and fascism. Jansson herself was a private but courageous figure who, living in a time when same-sex relationships were illegal in Finland, wove her experiences and loves into the stories through coded language and creative storytelling. Hyper Games has leaned into that emotional complexity rather than softening it, aiming to capture both the warmth and the darker undercurrents that make the Moomin stories resonate across generations.

Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth arrives on PS5 on September 18.