What may seem like nothing more than a fireplace simulator turns out to be a pretty addictive and interesting experience
Story: 9/10
It's been snowing for a seemingly endless amount of time, each day growing colder and colder, in the shelter of your own house, there's only one way to fight the cold and it's with your very own Little Inferno! A fireplace made to burn anything and everything you possess so you can bask in the warmth of the fire.
By first glace, it'd be ridiculous to think that a game in which you burn things would even have a story, but this game does and as you burn more and more objects, you interact with others through messages sent to you, these messages update you on the condition of the outside world and if it wasn't for the story, I probably wouldn't have finished the game yet as the story drove me to continue burning through things.
Visuals: 8/10
For the most part, you're staring at your Little Inferno, it's a curious looking device though. The fire animation looks amazing and everything burns the way they're supposed to. Nearly every item has a unique way of "burning" which further adds to the curiosity of the game.
The visuals are very charming and is definitely the style of the developers, especially if you've played World of Goo.
Sound: 10/10
The sound in this game is fantastic, from the retro style music of the catalogs, to the superb sound effects of each item and the fire, it adds a whole level of atmosphere to the game.
Gameplay: 8/10
Basically you have a fireplace, you place objects in it and set it on fire. Every item does cost money and in order to earn money, every item (or little spiders you see crawling about) that you burn (this includes letters you receive) drops money when you burn it. Occasionally you'll get stamps from burning items, especially letters. When you order an item, it takes a set amount of time for it to arrive, obviously early items will arrive as soon as 5 seconds after you order it but later or more expensive items will take longer, the most expensive item takes around 5 minutes to arrive. In order to speed things up, you can spend your stamps for priority delivery, every 30 seconds costs 1 stamp.
The best way to earn stamps is to create combos. On the upper right corner, you'll see a tab, it's filled with up to 99 combos. You have to burn specific items together to achieve these combos. Some are painfully obvious like the first one "Bike Pirate" but others do require a good amount of thinking and reading up on the descriptions of your items.
One thing I especially loved and really appreciated was how the game did little shoutouts to other classic or famous titles (all of which should be obvious to you when you play).
Value: 6/10
The story is short, it took me a little over 3 hours to beat the game and there really isn't much to do after you discover all 99 combos. I'm pretty sure I will go back and redo every thing again to see how well I can remember all 99 combos but yeah, it's really short and depends on how much of a pyro you are :D
Overall: 8.5/10
Despite its length and odd appeal, Little Inferno is still a very interesting and memorable experience, it was on sale for the past 2 weeks so hopefully if you were interested, you bought already but if not, try waiting for another sale because $15 is pretty steep for this game. I personally really enjoyed it for its puzzle elements and the story. If you're a pyro though, you should definitely play this game.