I played a lot of Little Inferno. After being slightly confused concerning the gameplay, I quickly caught onto the core gameplay loop of buying items, burning them, and then burning items together to achieve preset combinations. My goal was not just to progress through all the catalogs, but to get every single combo in the game. There was something satisfying in the feedback of finding a combo, and burning things in the fireplace overall felt good. Time started speeding up mentally, as I continuously purchased new items, saw what unique property they had when burned, and then tried to make combos with them.
And yet, these little annoyances kept on popping up. I waited endlessly for new items to arrive. And while I used stamps to speed up the arrival of items, the restock time before you can purchase again cannot be skipped in any way. This frustrated me especially when I just failed to complete a combo and wanted to try again. Additionally, the limits on package number were arbitrary and only served to slow the game down. Then, the ever expanding number of items increased the challenge of finding combos (which has a large time cost if failed) unpleasantly. The vagueness in description caused me to find alternate solutions that the game did not accept. For instance, I was convinced that the Russian dolls and the nuke would give the “Cold War” combo, but they did not.
Other frustrations included remembering the unique effect of each item. As mentioned above, making a mistake costs you a lot of time playtime. And if it wasn’t obvious, I was not very good at the game. While I did find most of the combos before putting the game down, this was not before multiple hours went by on trying to find a few specific ones. So each mistake was just more and more frustrating, as I failed to remember which specific item had been associated with which specific effect. And then we finally get to the razor. I failed the “Manly Combo” at least five times, using the correct set of items, because the razor kept on wildly jumping around and destroying the other items in the combo before I could light them all on fire. This is where the restock time was especially egregious. This was such an annoying game!
Why Little Inferno Is Intentionally Annoying
Please note that at no point did these annoyances stop me from playing the game. But they did cause me to shift in my chair impatiently. And they made me realize something. This game was inherently tedious to play. While burning items was satisfying for the most part, you spent most of the time waiting. Waiting for new items to arrive, waiting for items to restock, and waiting for items to finish burning (aka what’s supposed to be the fun part) so that you get your money and fireplace space back. You could even say the game was wasting my time. Outside of remembering the item effects when burned, there is no genuinely challenging part of the game. But that does not mean the game isn’t difficult; it is a perseverance challenge.
While I did set the bar high at attempting to get every combo (I did eventually quit with four or five remaining and have yet to return), “Little Inferno” challenges the player to think about how they utilize their time. Getting all the combos is mechanically difficult, due to the inbuilt frustrations that test a player’s perseverance. Additionally, it is a dull and somewhat pointless activity. While all games can be called pointless if desired, “Little Inferno” goes particularly far in trying to make the game seem like a waste of time. The designers walk a tight balance between making a game that wastes your time and making a game that makes you think about wasted time. There is still enough satisfaction in the actual act of burning things that keeps the game enjoyable (it’s why I didn’t quit until late and why I intend to finish the game), but there’s just enough time wastage going on to clue in the player. You think “this is pointless” but continue to play anyway. And it is boring. But it’s a good boring, a comfortable feeling.
I think this is why we play “Little Inferno” in Critical Videogame Studies. The mechanical difficulty in the game is very unique. And, ideally, you’re bored when you’re playing the game. But there’s something satisfying in there. Something that feels right about spending your time on the game. Because you know that it is so unproductive, you know you are only playing the game because you truly want to. And I think that’s pretty cool.
Please note that I did read this interview with the developers of “Little Inferno” which probably influenced my writing. But I still tried my best to add my own thoughts to the conversation and not simply copy the designers.
I could not stop playing Little Inferno despite the game being repetitive and, at times, feeling like a waste of time. I like your idea of the game being inherently tedious; the shipping times were painfully slow after failing to burn a combo. Also, the items that destroyed everything were annoying, or the ones that broke on their own with little movement (bulbs). A boring, comfortable game is a perfect description for Little Inferno. It is fun to mess around with fire when you are the one inflicting destruction. Like you said, playing this game is unproductive, which means that the enjoyment comes from how the player views this unproductiveness (and I was heavily invested in it).
The concept of things being “intentionally boring” is a concept I find to be super relevant, not just in video-games, but im media as a whole. In a way, it reminds me of “The Red Wheelbarrow” poem and an activity my high school lit teacher made us do. We spent a lot of time coming up with individual analyses, just for the teacher to tell us we were wrong. It was tedious and long and, honestly, boring, but it helped make the meaning of the poem stick. I think the long waiting time in Little Inferno does the same.
I also could not get myself to stop playing Little Inferno very easily, despite not being able to find certain combos and spending a large amount of time waiting. One could argue that the positive affect the game produces outweighs the boredom of waiting and the mechanical difficulty of making combos. The enjoyment we get from watching things burn is enough to bear through the frustration. It reminds me of the short-term boost that social media gives us. The enjoyment we get is enough to bear through the frustration of wasting time and potentially watching something that may bring up negative feelings.