Little Inferno

Do you like playing with fire? Here's a fire simulator, tied in with a deep, heartfelt story. Most likely the most intelligent thing you'll ever encounter in the casual genre. Little Inferno is a game where you sit and burns toys in your newly acquired Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace. When the toy is burned, coins pop up, which you can use to buy more toys to burn. Burning the right combinations of toys grants access to new catalogs with even more toys to burn. Little Inferno uses the absence of traditional gameplay to force the player to actually think about the gaming experience. It's fun to burn toys. Really fun, actually. You are entertained. But ... Like the TV-show 'Cult', this games has some recursive irony going for it. You can buy (and burn) a monitor which displays the same screen that you, the player, are looking at. You bought the monitor from Tomorrow Coorporation - the same company which produced the game itself. The game is (about) hollow, casual gaming, consumerism, global warming, standard disclaimers, the economy, growing up ... but mostly, it is about watching shit burn! The digital flames are very nicely designed: the fire illuminates their surroundings and there are sparks, smoke and haze. The toy blackes with soot, ignites and transforms gradually to ash which falls apart when touched. One time when I set fire to a spider and it fell down and accidently set fire to a wooden block, I caught myself blowing on the screen to extinguish it! The fire is not photorealistic, not at all. But it behaves like the real thing. This is the ultimate pyrotech sandbox. Little Inferno offers over a hundred different toys to burn. They are very varied: some are downright horrible, others funny, some explode, defy gravity, provides colored fire ... While most indie games are just recycling the same old and harmless nostalgia, this is one of the most rewarding digital experiences.