Winnie-the-Pooh mutates into a horror in this dungeon crawler

Everyone’s favourite hunny-yellow bear will mutate into a fleshy horror bristling with extra arms and eyeballs and glands in Winnie’s Hole, the next roguelikelike dungeon crawler from Ring Of Pain developers Twice Different. The earliest Winnie-the-Pooh stories are no longer under copyright in the US, see, meaning people can do whatever they want. Including this. Inevitably including this. Come see the horrible Pooh and his hole in the announcement trailer below.

In Winnie’s Hole (and in Winnie’s hole), we’ll play as an invasive virus capturing Winnie’s cells to mutate and turn him into something truly terrible. Tentacles! Spines! Venom glands! So many bonus mouths and eyeballs and limbs and lumps! Use this new meat to overpower his friends and welcome them to the biomass. Glory to the flesh, glory to the mass.

Winnie’s Hole is coming to Windows via Steam. No word on a release date yet.

After 95 years smothered in the cocoon of copyright, the earliest Winnie-the-Pooh stories left copyright in 2022 and emerged into a bright new world of possibilities. One inevitable consequence of a beloved childhood character becoming fair game in the public domain was people making DARK, TWISTED, EDGY versions and honestly I’m a lot less cynical about this one than I expected to be. It’s pretty funny. I’m certainly more interested in this than that Blood & Honey horror movie.

Lots of Pooh is still under copyright, mind. The modern image of Winnie in a red shirt (which honestly only makes him appear more undressed) is still locked away until 2027 in the US, and many stories and songs and recognised bits of Poohdom were built by Disney after they licensed the rights. Weirdly, I think that includes the version of his name without hyphens, which is why Blood & Honey and that Ryan Reynolds commercial for his phone company officially hypenate their Winnies. I get slightly nervous for Twice Different seeing Pooh unhyphenated on the Steam page. I don’t think it’s unhealthy to be overly cautious around Disney characters; I was careful to hypenate my own Pooh in this post.

I know Nate dug Twice Different’s first game, Ring Of Pain. He called it “a well-designed take on a classic premise” which “stands apart from the pack thanks to the creativity of its item design, and interesting risk/reward dilemmas introduced by the ring format” as well as “superb sound and art direction.” Got a horrible owl, too.