Snowed Under walkthrough
A spoiler-aware route from the first shovel to the tower, with bugs called out.
Spoiler warning. This walkthrough describes day flow, landmark order, and the tower as a goal. Ending flags stay on the endings guide. If you only want systems, stay on Getting Started and How to Dig.
Snowed Under is not a chapter-select RPG. You expand a snow map, hit a work limit, talk to Kai, sleep, and repeat until the radio tower is reachable. Steam names the milestones: First Steps, A Better Tool, Last Stop (the bus), A Friendly Face (meet the NPC), A Signal in the Snow (the tower), then Ending A or B.
Opening: establish the hub
Learn the shelter. Find the fire, storage, and Kai. Save. Clear the soft snow ring. Pick up scrap and cans together when they spawn. Buy the first shovel upgrade before you commit to a long heading. This is the same advice as the upgrade planner, because the walkthrough fails if the shovel is still a spoon.
Open one corridor toward the nearest structure. When you see a building, enter it, take the wall note, grab visible scrap, and leave if a wolf is home. You are building a graph of indoor nodes, not 100% clearing yet.
Early-middle: bus, house, and documents
Last Stop unlocks when you discover the bus. Use it as a compass object in whiteouts. The old house matters for charms: players found four omamori around the exterior, not only inside. If you are charm hunting, walk the outside ring. If you are story hunting, read every paper. The Full Story wants every document. That can pop the daily work cap, which is good: you will go home and talk instead of digging until your eyes hurt.
Keys and locked boxes mostly pay scrap. Do not expect a unique relic in every crate. A Japanese review said gold scrap arrives after you already needed the upgrades. Still pick it up for Leave Nothing Behind if you care.
Meet the NPC if you have not (A Friendly Face). Keep Kai conversations current. Players who only mined missed story beats that later endings assume you heard.
Day 2 and Day 3 caution
Community threads describe Day 2 stuck in darkness with wolves howling and no morning. Day 3 includes a shelter event with an empty room and a photo peeking from a bag. After that event, tools can vanish, and loading the save can loop just before the photo. Another player froze after touching the backpack without saving, after waiting a long time for night to start.
Walkthrough rule: save before shelter story objects on later days. If the clock breaks, read known bugs rather than maxing every stat in the dark (someone did that and still froze).
Late: tower approach
A Signal in the Snow is reach the radio tower. Patch 1.04 fixed a bug where the freezing effect would not stop on the tower roof. If you still ice over after the climb, update the build via patch notes.
You do not need every charm to see the tower. You do need a shovel that can cut distant hard snow and a path you can follow home if you abort. Bring food. Do not learn Lost to the Cold by accident on your only save.
Binoculars from a second floor help you match the map hub to the real geometry. Buildings cluster; some players found the skyline hard to read and switched to the map only.
After the credits
If Steam shows Ending A, stop and decide. Community consensus is that Ending B is a resolution route after A, and some players were confused when flowers appeared without extra work. Use the ending checklist instead of mashing NG+ blindly.
For 100%, remain in the snow for No Shelter Left Unseen, remaining documents, 100 scraps, 20 cans, final shovel, and Patrons (all patron contents, currently the rarest global stat). That is a collectathon, not the story walkthrough. Switch to achievements and the tracker.
If a no-commentary video helps more than text, the embed in the middle of this page is a full playthrough. Pause it when you only need a camera angle, then come back to the wiki for bugs and collectible notes the video may skip.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common questions.
Do I have to enter every building for the story?
No. Entering all buildings is No Shelter Left Unseen. Story cares more about days, Kai talks, documents you actually read, and the tower.
When should I go to the radio tower?
After the shovel can handle distant snow and you have a path back. The tower is a late landmark, not a tutorial objective.
My Day 2 never becomes morning. What now?
That stall is a reported issue. Save separately, check known bugs, and avoid grinding an hour in broken night.
Does this walkthrough include Ending B steps?
No. Ending flags are isolated on the endings page so you can finish A first without extra spoilers.