Little Inferno was a game released in 2012 for various platforms by The Tomorrow Corporation. It was essentially an interactive virtual fireplace, giving you a large catalog of items to set on fire. The game was a rather unconventional title with no way to lose the game and the closest thing to a challenge or puzzle being figuring out combos of which items to burn together.
On the tenth anniversary of the game’s original release date, a DLC named Little Inferno: Ho Ho Holiday was released, notably the first DLC the game has gotten despite having been released a for ten years. While some games do have seasonal modes for holidays such as Halloween or Christmas, a dedicated game or DLC specifically revolving around a holiday is fairly rare. Being a game all about looking at a fireplace, Little Inferno is a very fitting choice to get a Christmas-themed DLC.
Little Inferno: Ho Ho Holiday is available as DLC for Little Inferno on Steam as well as the Nintendo Switch for $4.99.
Story – Watching Things Burn
Little Inferno‘s story is about the player character getting a Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace and buying various items out of a catalog to burn in it. As you buy and burn more items, you start getting letters from different people that tell a story of what’s going on in the outside world. It’s an interesting style of storytelling that you don’t see too often.
The Ho Ho Holiday DLC has a similar story to that of the base game. The letters you get from Ms. Nancy and The Weather Man are largely unchanged other than occasional references to Christmas. The main difference is that while in the base game the person who sends the majority of the letters you get is your next-door neighbor Sugar Plumps, in the DLC you’re mostly getting letters from your other neighbor, a cranky and reclusive nerd named 8-bit Nate. Nate is, frankly, a far less charming and endearing character than Sugar Plumps was, and thus a considerably less interesting character for the game’s story to focus on. He does still provide some funny moments as he’s subjected to a rendition on the classic Christmas Carol story. Still, it’s best to play the base game first, as it tells an overall better story.
The primary difference is this new catalog you receive in the mail.
Gameplay – A Firey Sandbox
The gameplay of Little Inferno is more or less just throwing things into a fireplace and setting them on fire. Each of the different items you can buy from the catalog does something unique when set on fire. For example, ice cubes freeze other objects on contact and make them shatter. Fireworks and bombs explode shortly after being set on fire. Mechanical items such as robots activate and start moving when they’re ignited. In a way, the game is a sandbox of sorts, just letting you relax and play around with the many items however you’d like. There’s no way to lose or get a game over, so you can do whatever you want.
Ho Ho Holiday adds a new catalog with twenty new holiday-themed items. These items are all very well-designed and can be fun just to mess around with. Many of them do something that wasn’t done before by any item in the base game. Unliked the other catalogs, these items are unlocked a few at a time with each of the base game catalogs you make your way through. Presumably this was to space out the new content throughout the full playthrough. While twenty new items is a relatively small amount to add after ten years, they’re all among the best in the game.
Combos
The closest thing Little Inferno has to a challenge is the combo system. By burning certain items together, you’ll create a combo which awards you stamps that let you receive items faster. Combos are needed to progress in the game, with each catalog requiring a certain number of combos gotten to unlock them. A list of combos give hints as to which items to use. Combos do help to make Little Inferno feel more like a proper game, though they generally aren’t that difficult to figure out and it often feels like the game would’ve been fine without them.
Ho Ho Holiday adds a number of new combos featuring the new items. These help to make the new items fit more naturally in with the rest of the game, though the snowflake symbol denoting when a combo includes a holiday item does tend to take some of the difficulty out of figuring them out.
You can arrange the items any way you’d like before setting them on fire.
Graphics And Audio – Like a Yule Log but with More Options
Little Inferno has an interesting art-style, evoking an off-beat and vaguely gothic cartoon from the early 2000s. The characters have mismatched bug eyes, as do several of the objects available in the catalog. The only thing you’ll be seeing for most of the game is the fireplace and whichever items you’ve placed in it. It brings to mind something like the Christmas yule log broadcast seen on TV that’s just a video of a fireplace, only in this case it’s interactive and there’s a far greater variety of things to burn.
Little Inferno doesn’t have much music, with most of the audio being sound effects from the various items that are burning. There are some songs, mainly when reading one of the letters you’ve gotten. There’s also the song that plays when looking through the item catalogs, which is a catchy tune you’d expect to hear on an old-fashioned shopping channel. Another standout song is the one that plays during the game’s ending sequence.
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- The DLC’s new items are involved in many new combos, as denoted by the snowflake symbol.
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- The Holiday DLC is listed as a separate mode from the classic game.
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- The new items are unlocked as you progress through the story.
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- The letters you get from Ms. Nancy and the Weather Man are largely the same, but they do acknowledge the holiday season at points.
Little Inferno: Ho Ho Holiday was reviewed on PC.
