Little Inferno review: Burn it all
Keep track of all of Joystiq’s Wii U launch coverage on our Wii U hub page! Take your TV. Just yank it out of your entertainment center. It doesn’t matter if you unhook it from the cable box or your Wii U first. You’re just going to stick it right in the fireplace. Burn that TV. Burn your plates, your sunglasses, your radio. Your favorite stuffed animal from childhood? Your precious family photos? Straight into the fire. All the stuff that’s accumulating in your house, all the junk you work to pay for that sits untouched on shelves or in the back of closets, pull them out and toss them in your fireplace and burn them. I mean, you’re already wasting your time. You’re playing a video game.
That’s what Little Inferno says. Except this weird little downloadable from Tomorrow Corporation (a team-up from the designers of World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure) isn’t really a game. It’s an anti-game, featuring few of the qualities necessary for an activity to be called a game. It has rules, but there’s no challenge. There’s a win state, but you can’t lose, so it’s more like an inevitable stopping point. Mostly, Little Inferno is an interactive story, but it’s even low-key about that until an unforgettable conclusion. That story mocks us for fixating on this repetitive, unproductive activity and ignoring the world around us, arguing that this passivity and neglect is as destructive as if we intentionally tried to ruin the world. And somehow Little Inferno makes this subversive point about as adorably as possible.
Gallery: Little InfernoContinue reading Little Inferno review: Burn it allLittle Inferno review: Burn it all originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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