I imagine that when our primitive ancestors (I’m on some sort of caveman kick this week, aren’t I?) first discovered fire, the scientific method was invented right alongside it. Having made fire (or captured it from some other source, maybe by carrying a burning stick from a forest fire or a lightning strike or something), and hopefully having figured to ring it with stones or keep it away from dry brush, the first thing I assume they did was try to figure out what to chuck in it. Certain things worked — dry sticks, grass, furs (“Thanks a lot” grunted the one whose furs they’d tossed in, and thus sarcasm was invented too); others resulted in less pleasing effects — water, boulders, mastodon dung.

Little Inferno from Tomorrow Corporation, which consists of the same indie darlings behind the much-lauded World of Goo, deals largely with that lizard portion of our brains that compels us to acquire stuff for the sake of burning it up. Literally. Like with fire, not metaphorically. But does the game itself burn bright, or burn out?

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