Allison Weiss

Game Designer & Artist

Little Inferno

Most of my friends can tell you that I’m a bit of a pyromaniac. I won’t burn anything important, but I am known to stare longingly at a lit match until it burns up. The gorgeous fire in this game would have been enough to draw me in, but it goes above and beyond and supplies clever satire, hilarious item descriptions, fantastic explosions, and a genuinely fun game, to boot.

First Impressions

The game opens with the first and most important thing you need to know to play: how to light a fire. And once you’ve burned up all your possessions, and gotten some money for your effort, you receive a letter containing a catalog of more things to burn! The introduction simple and easy, but that’s all you’ll ever need to do to play the game. And I love it. I loved it then, and I love it now. Like, THANK YOU! There is no long introduction, no paragraph after paragraph of worldbuilding context, but I already understand all I will have to know to move forward and enjoy this game.

And sure, you receive letters from Miss Nancy, from your neighbor, Sugar Plumps, and from The Weather Man from time to time that will build up your perspective of the world beyond your “Little Inferno High Definition Entertainment Fireplace”. But the game makes it original premise clear right away: “Your Little Inferno is not like other games. There are no points. There is no score. You are not being timed. Just make a nice fire…and stay warm in the glow of your high definition entertainment product!”

Things I wasn’t crazy about…

No Options Menu

The only issue I have with Little Inferno, however, is that it has no options menu. This game is very simple and straightforward, just select a save file and get to burning. But there is no windowed option, and no option to adjust the music or effects volume. When paused, you can only resume gameplay, exit to the title page, or exit the game entirely.

I Love All of It

The premise is so simple, and it allows the player to do all of the things they set out to do.

All you are going to do is burn things, and enjoy watching them burn, get the money from those things, and buy more stuff. Little Inferno gives the player direction with its “COMBOS” list. Based of the names of the list items, the player has to figure out what to burn. The more combos you get, the more catalogs you unlock, and when you’ve burned through all the catalogs…well, I’ll let you see for yourself what comes after.

What I absolutely loved…

The Catalog Item Descriptions

The catalog items each have their own flavor text. Some are misses, but oh my gosh, some of them are absolutely hilarious to me. “Someone else’s credit card” for example, the item name alone is a riot, and is followed up with “Let’s go shopping!” There are even funnie

The Fire

It’s just so pretty. The input is one to one, it tracks your mouse position accurately, leaving behind a trail of gentle heat distortion and a bit of smoke. Both of which fade with a realistic rate and appearance. And when your flame lights something on fire, it lets of little sparks that flow upward and enhance the intensity of the fire effect.

The visual appearance of Little Inferno is loaded with juice and positive feedback to fuel its aesthetic fire.

The Waiting Times and Stamps

Not long after you get started in Little Inferno, you will find yourself waiting for your next package to arrive. And as you progress the wait time will gradually get longer. The game provides you with stamps to solve the problem of waiting, but stamps can only be gained by burning combos. And so, you are brought into the loop of burning combos to get stamps, and burn more things in less time. Then, to achieve new combos you have to keep expanding your available catalogs. And THEN, you need more stamps so you don’t have to wait two whole minutes to get your new things.

This loop encourages the player to progress through the game, see more of the hidden combos, and still leave the speed of the game’s pace up to them. Were this a Blizzard game you could probably spend real world money for in exchange for stamps. But Little Inferno proposes that either you just play the game as intended, or let your real world time slowly tick away as you wait for a fictional package.

My Favorite Moment

There comes a time when you unlock what appears to be a small, toy school bus. When you lit it on fire, however, the driver of the tiny bus puts the bus in drive and starts moving, as the child-like silhouettes aboard the bus scream in agony, until the whole thing explodes in slow motion.

The shock of the moment combined with a macabre sense of humor resulted in this being among my favorite items, that I proceeded to use in conjunction with several other exploding items.

The “Celebration Bus” is an item in the first catalog, by the way. This game lets you know what kind of sense of humor it has right away.

The Rest of my Notes…

Cleaning the fireplace: The things you burn often leave behind crisp remains, the cleaning of which yields no real reward besides the zen feeling of once again having a clean fireplace. Doing so gives off a clicker-game vibe that may have been under utilized as it is an action the player must to do clear their space without receiving feedback like the rest of the game supplies.
The bugs: Little one eyed, spider-like creature will crawl down into your fireplace from time to time and yield money when they are clicked on or burned. They act as a good filler for cash when you don’t have enough money left to buy fuel for your fire. Though I couldn’t suss out the variables that cause them to spawn, it happens often enough to be a pleasant surprise and small enough boost to get you back into the gameplay loop of burning things to buy more things.
“The world is getting colder…”: The narrative of the game focuses on how everyone in the world has one of these fireplaces so that they can burn all that they have in order to stay warm. The tone that comes from the juxtaposition of the game’s materialism as a distraction and unsustainable solution to the changing climate still holds as much relevance, if not more with the recent climate debates, as it did in 2013 when the game was released.
Touch screens feel the best: Over the years, I have purchased and played Little Inferno on nearly every system I’ve had: PC, mobile, console, and handheld (Wii U and Switch). Heck, I even hooked up a drawing tablet to my computer and played it that way! And I have to say that nothing feels better than using a touch screen interface. That way, the flames are lit wherever you point with your fingertips, and you get to feel like a low-tier god of fire.
Timeless: Little Inferno was released in 2013, six years ago. But as I revisited it for this entry, I found that, had I never seen it before, I could easily believe it was a recent release. Climate change message aside, the graphics and cartoon-y art style of the catalog items and the realistic and gorgeous fire have held up over time. If it were released now, there might be more of a focus on the workers who deliver your packages.