You can erase the time by spending stamps, but they spawn infrequently and combos generally don’t spit out enough of them. When you purchase an item, you have to wait for it to be “delivered” to you. It’s like one of those douchebags that buys a Lamborghini and then keeps it in his garage without ever driving it.Īnd getting those combos can be fucking agonizing because the game has needless item-refill times. Despite having a sophisticated physics engine, it’s not really put to use here. Although some of the items have moving parts or unique sequences while they burn, you never have to create a Rube-Goldberg-style setup to get a combo. Unfortunately, this is about as deep as it gets. For example, you might see a combo listed as “Movie Night.” To clear this, you have to buy an ear of corn (which of course turns into popcorn when you burn it) and a television set. Achieving a combo is done by buying each item, putting them in the fire together, and burning them together. Things are kept fresh by a having a list of 99 combos that you have to figure out on your own. Beating the game only requires you to purchase and burn each item in the catalog once. The gameplay itself is really too simplistic for its own good. And besides, the gameplay is downright hypnotic, and after a while any and all interruptions were about as well received as a fart to the mouth would be. I had someone tell me that Little Inferno actually gives you visual clues as to what is really going on, but the visual style kind of masks those clues unless you’re outright looking for them. I’ve heard it described as “bold” or “social commentary” or the ever-dreaded “art!” And of course, art here is meant to mean “criticism proof.” As always, art is in the eye of the beholder, and while I held Little Inferno, my eyes started to get a bit droopy while I watched the ending.
Once you finish all the catalogs, an obnoxious ending unfolds over the course of the next twenty-plus minutes. There’s a few twists and turns along the way, one of which genuinely made me feel bad. While you’re doing this, you get a barrage of messages from a creepy neighbor girl who asks you to send her gifts. You then hit a catalog to order more shit to burn.
Once you burn a toy, it spits out more money than you paid for it. With it, you place toys in it and then burn them. You receive an Inferno Entertainment Center. You’re a kid that lives in a snowy world. Little Inferno charges you $15 upfront, and keeps the action nice-and-slow. Only such games typically cost $1 or less and make their money by nickle-and-diming you to speed up the gameplay. In fact, there are lots mechanical issues with Little Inferno that make me think it started life as a micro transaction-oriented mobile game, like Doodle God for arsonists. Little Inferno, on the other hand, feels like the type of time-sink you would find on the iPhone market. But World of Goo got by on being a quirky, addictive physics-puzzler. It’s by the guys behind World of Goo, which was probably the best digital-download game on the original Wii. That’s the idea behind Little Inferno, an independent game for the Wii U. Or, if you want to be a killjoy, the season to burn toys in a fireplace. Looking for the solution to the four things you need to burn? I posted them under the trailer below. For that reason, I’m bumping up my enthusiasm to recommend it to “moderately decent.” I also bumped it 30 spots up the Leaderboard. UPDATE: Little Inferno’s default price now seems to be $9.99.