Once you get started, it's easy to succumb to the instant gratification of buying and burning to your heart's content, but the nagging question of, "Is this all there is?" looms larger and larger as you progress. Little Inferno's unique premise, addictive firebug tinkering, and creative presentation make it a neat diversion throughout the five or so short hours it takes to burn through it. This simple but effective puzzle system adds a greater purpose to your destructive endeavors.
While the clever names of the combos give you a hint as to how to achieve them, the real fun comes from experimenting to see which of the items you've unlocked might meet a certain criteria when burned together. For example, you might burn an alarm clock and a cup of coffee for their alertness-enhancing properties. These medals are earned by burning certain combinations of objects together. To unlock a new catalog, you need to purchase everything in the previous one and accrue a certain number of medals. Shipping times and item costs help put on the brakes a bit to keep you from plowing through this already short game too quickly, but the combo system is what really makes Little Inferno's progression an addictive process. Pricier goods have a longer shipping time than cheapo items, but you can spend stamp coupons, which are dropped by some burnt offerings, to rush-deliver anything you've ordered. Once you purchase and burn something, you can reorder it, and buying items unlocks more objects in a given catalog. You never know what to expect until you throw them onto the burn pile. Toasters erupt in a spray of burnt bread. Many objects also have special properties or crazy behaviors that manifest when you burn them, which is fun to experiment with. Silly nods to game culture and other indie games ( Super Meat Boy, World of Goo) are sprinkled in with the creatively designed clutter. Digging through the many curiosities buried in the catalogs and reading their humorous descriptions is charming on its own.
Every item you burn spits out coins that you amass and spend on purchasing tons of goodies from seven different catalogs full of strange toys and gadgets.
Thankfully, there's more to this simple virtual toy than meets the eye.īurning things occupies most of your time in Little Inferno, but unlocking new stuff to torch fleshes out the seemingly repetitive task with a puzzle-like progression element. Indeed, the simple act of stacking and burning is mesmerizing, but that alone isn't enough to hold everyone's attention for long. The fire physics and realistic flame behavior are particularly well done, and throwing more doomed goodies onto the pile is a fascinating delight. You can also turn it into a match, and there's something hypnotic about watching tougher-burning items start to smolder and smoke before erupting in flame.
You use your cursor to pick up and manipulate items you place in the fire pit. Using the Wii Remote or the Wii U GamePad, you hurl a medley of oddball objects into the fireplace and then direct your pointer to the screen to ignite them.
In essence, Little Inferno turns your TV screen into a virtual hearth, and it's here that the game's pyro shenanigans immediately suck you in. You just have to burn a whole lot of junk to get there. At first it seems there's not much else to the story as the fiery destruction gets under way, but little plot nuggets pop up when you least expect them, eventually spinning out into a satisfying but weird conclusion. Produced, in a meta-twist, by the not so fictional Tomorrow Corporation, this device and its humorously demented in-game marketing video encourage kids to throw their toys on the pyre and bask in the glory of sparks, smoke, and soot.
Set in an icy world full of dangerously dropping temperatures and constant snowfall, this kooky tale centers around a popular but amusingly ill-conceived piece of technology for kids: the Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace. Now Playing: Video Review - Little Inferno By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's