Little Inferno is an indie single-player game a pyromaniac would love or just anyone who enjoys burning things in a fireplace. The premise of the game is very simple you order toys and burn them to stay warm in what seems like a never-ending winter. There is a little bit of a story and even a surprise at the end.
Being A Pyromaniac In Little Inferno!
Little Inferno is one of those games where simple is just better. The player finds themselves playing as a kid who has ordered a Little Inferno fireplace from the Tomorrow Corporation. To keep himself warm and entertained he also orders toys from the same company to burn.
For almost all of the game you really are just burning items. The more stuff you burn the more coins you get to buy even more stuff. The game also has a lot of combos you achieve by burning the correct items together in the fireplace. You are given helpful little hints like cat lady or change the bulb that hints at the items you need to buy at the store and burn together.
For those who enjoy earning achievements, the combo system will fulfill some of that desire. It is also required for the player to reach enough combos to unlock the next order catalog to buy new items. Where you guessed it you burn them all to progress further along in the game.
A rather fun element of the game was creating your own combos outside the ones needed to complete achievements. A number of items burn in unique manners, explode, or have other effects like being a magnet that is cool to mess around with. Some of them can have a rather visually interesting effect and others just go BOOM with everything in the fireplace!
All in all, there are over one hundred items to order and burn from the different catalogs you unlock. If the burning thing in a game is not appealing to you than this game is just not for you. Everything else is rather thinly layered on top of this main part.
More Than Just Burning Things In Little Inferno
Outside of just burning stuff, there are a number of other things that make up the game. Such fun times include waiting for toy packages to arrive, receiving letters, and a surprise ending to discover. A lot more effort was put into the game than a first glance would give it credit for.
The game does use a slight time delay in the form of waiting for packages to arrive one you buy them. You randomly get Tomorrow Stamps that you can use to seed up these timers. When you first start it only takes a couple of seconds before your toys have arrived. Late game it is going to take a few minutes and that was when I started to use all my Tomorrow Stamps.
All thought out your hours of watching things burn you get letters from NPCs in-game which you can burn as well. These are used to progress the game's storyline in a cute little fashion. Sometimes they are just dropping you hints about the game and other times they are a bit more demanding like requesting an item to be sent. Which I felt helps shake up the gameplay and gives the player a little direction to head in.
You even get these in-game weather reports that set the tone to a rather sad and cold world you live in. It almost seems like the game is trying to make an environmental statement from all the toys being burned by children to stay warm and the effects happening in the city. That, however, does not seem to be pushed along further other than the weather reporter talking about seeing all the smoke over the city with the snow.
There is also a surprise ending the player can trigger with an end game combo. The game does prompt you at some point to try it out. I’m not going to spoil what it was but don’t worry once you are done going down that path you can always exit the game and the last save will put you back before that event. It is, however, a limited event so enjoy it!
Final Thoughts
Little Inferno can be a rather short game unless you just enjoy burning the large number of items you can order over and over again. I got around five hours of enjoyment out of it. While it’s cool to watch things explode, freeze and burn I’m not a huge pyromaniac so it did lose some charm after a while.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about the game Little Inferno.
Disclosure: Game received for free.
