I repeat, SPOILERS!

I am serious. If you have not seen the "Thanks for playing" message, stop reading and play the game.

Play this game blind to get the best experience, don't even read this spoiler warning to get the ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE.

So why am i even writing this... Well, my mind is blown and i have to tell someone somewhere something.

I have just played the game for 5 hours and encountered the end. the buildup to the end and everything about the first part is amazing.

Perhaps it is because of where i am in life and other factors, but the ending grabbed me so hard i cried and felt like.... like.... i dunno. It felt amazing.

Did not expect anything like it.

I hate the developers of this game for making a character in the game that i can't have as a friend in real life. Something is missing from my life and it is the neighbor sending you letters.

Anyway. Even with all the warnings i want to keep this as spoiler free as i can, so i can't think of anything more to say than: This is my favorite game of the year... century........ ever?

So it's not just a throw random shit in a fireplace simulator? Anyway, I didn't really care much for World of Goo, so chances are I'm never going to play this...

I just finished the game and cannot believe a game where you throw stuff in a fireplace can have such an affecting story. I could not stop smiling through out the last parts of the game.

Going into the game with little to no fore knowledge is defiantly the way to go.

@CatMeat: Yes! I got the game since i know some of the history of the developers but had no real knowledge of the game itself, and i was crying with a big grin on my face throughout the last part. Though it has left me with a hole in my heart. I keep hovering my mouse over the shortcut to start it but i know it will never be that amazing again.

Okay that was actually quite the spectacular game, it had a pretty sweet message behind it, something about it just made me smile. (spoiler free explanation)

I thought the ending was bad. The game took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to beat and I loved the gameplay, I finished it in one sitting. I hate when developers try to make their ending some deep life changing thing for the player, it's not, it's shallow and doesn't explain anything. Why does this place keep getting colder? Whats the deal with the face on the back of the fire place? Why does putting some things like sun glasses and a magnet in my fireplace make my house explode? How do I survive the explosion unscathed? Why does it take 30 seconds to open some damn gates to this company's building? Who's this old lady and why does she have a rocket ship? Why does my character even care? Why do I go with this creepy weather man on his balloon? The ending doesn't explain anything. All I get is a delivery man that comes inside my house to drop off my packages, a gate guard that used to be a bus driver, and a secretary that's writing a novel. All introduced for no reason in the last 5 minutes.

I'm going to play through it again and save the "Hug Coupon"

Just to see what happens.

This game has the craziest round about, super effective change in gameplay any game has ever had! It's like the MOM level of World of Goo to a factor of 50!

To YouTube I go.

@VooDooPC: Yeah but I feel even if you don't dig into that stuff the humor is good enough to justify the ending.

Well. That was four hours well spent. What an awesome little game. And that music is wonderful.

I'm a little disappointed that it didn't go as dark as it started to, but I'm still quite pleased overall. I also have a feeling that there are some good secrets tucked away.

@Colourful_Hippie said:

To YouTube I go.

Glad to see that I wasn't the only one with this mindset.

I was introduced to my friend playing it for his Lets play on youtube, he has no clue whats ahead of him.

So I was completely entranced by burning stuff. I am a pyromaniac I have the burns on my hands from when I was little and would seriously sit in front of the fire burning stuff when people were out. It stopped when my dad gave me a box of matches cleared the kitchen sink for me and let me burn stuff for 2 hours.

So this is basically playing my childhood dream...as sad as that is. Add on I love physics in games and the new tech in games as variable destruction, E.G the way the things break up and cut are never the same.

So I played and had a few laughs and then the end just opens ups. After 3 hours of playing.

I was close to crying. However I was playing it while on skype and I had a friend going "Hitman comes out tomorrow." just as a tear was about form...then its about to go and he goes "Hitman comes out tomorrow".....tears goes away...it then comes back...nope "Hitman comes out tomorrow." had to put up with it. Couldn't shout " I AM HAVING TOUCHING EMOTIONAL MOMENT IN MY FIRE SIMULATION GAME THAT I MIGHT CRY!"

Still....wow...it...wow. it was amazing.

I'm just glad to know Sugar Plumps is doing fine. It's a potential GOTY contender for me.

I really want to know, but I guess I let this be. I will never own a Wii U, but there is probably a decent chance the game will come out on PC or something in the future.

I'll play it on a different platform if it comes out there, I was absolutely delighted by World of Goo.

If its as weird as the mom level in world of goo than I'll be playing this for sure.

I'm not at all interested in actually playing this game, but I did watch the ending and it was magical.

I was promised spoilers! Yet I don't see anyone giving away the ending here.... what happens?

I really want to know, but I guess I let this be. I will never own a Wii U, but there is probably a decent chance the game will come out on PC or something in the future.

@animathias said:

@Zaccheus said:

I really want to know, but I guess I let this be. I will never own a Wii U, but there is probably a decent chance the game will come out on PC or something in the future.

It's on Steam right now for $14.99 (in the US at least.)

Oh... Problem solved!

Surprising lack of spoilers in here....

I'm not spending $15 on this thing, any chance someone could give a quick summary?

@Village_Guy said:

I'll play it on a different platform if it comes out there, I was absolutely delighted by World of Goo.

Its on pc right now. check it on steam. If i did get a WII U then i would definitly cry at tha low fps paperweight i baught. €ven little inferno has bad fps. Runs 100% with my computer so no worries there. Hope you buy it and enjoy it.

@Akyho said:

@Village_Guy said:

I'll play it on a different platform if it comes out there, I was absolutely delighted by World of Goo.

Its on pc right now. check it on steam. If i did get a WII U then i would definitly cry at tha low fps paperweight i baught. €ven little inferno has bad fps. Runs 100% with my computer so no worries there. Hope you buy it and enjoy it.

Awesome, thanks for the tip. I'll probably get it when I get back from work then :)

Seems a bit pricey at $15, even if it's from the World of Goo team. Gonna wait until it's on sale to check it out.

The ending was on the same level as World of Goo. A quirky, lovely, unforgettable thing. I wasn't in tears or anything, but I did love it, and I appreciate everything these guys do.

I'm curious, what aspect of the ending was emotionally touching for some of you? Was it the scene about the character having a social contact with another human being that resonated with you? Or perhaps the idea that life goes by so fast that your dreams are never fulfilled?

I found the ending interesting because it came out of nowhere but didn't have any sort of emotional breakthrough that some of you experienced.

@VooDooPC said:

I thought the ending was bad. The game took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to beat and I loved the gameplay, I finished it in one sitting. I hate when developers try to make their ending some deep life changing thing for the player, it's not, it's shallow and doesn't explain anything. Why does this place keep getting colder? Whats the deal with the face on the back of the fire place? Why does putting some things like sun glasses and a magnet in my fireplace make my house explode? How do I survive the explosion unscathed? Why does it take 30 seconds to open some damn gates to this company's building? Who's this old lady and why does she have a rocket ship? Why does my character even care? Why do I go with this creepy weather man on his balloon? The ending doesn't explain anything. All I get is a delivery man that comes inside my house to drop off my packages, a gate guard that used to be a bus driver, and a secretary that's writing a novel. All introduced for no reason in the last 5 minutes.

Seem you just don't get it.

@VooDooPC said:

I thought the ending was bad. The game took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to beat and I loved the gameplay, I finished it in one sitting. I hate when developers try to make their ending some deep life changing thing for the player, it's not, it's shallow and doesn't explain anything. Why does this place keep getting colder? Whats the deal with the face on the back of the fire place? Why does putting some things like sun glasses and a magnet in my fireplace make my house explode? How do I survive the explosion unscathed? Why does it take 30 seconds to open some damn gates to this company's building? Who's this old lady and why does she have a rocket ship? Why does my character even care? Why do I go with this creepy weather man on his balloon? The ending doesn't explain anything. All I get is a delivery man that comes inside my house to drop off my packages, a gate guard that used to be a bus driver, and a secretary that's writing a novel. All introduced for no reason in the last 5 minutes.

I agree. I feel like the ending was a bit of a let down for the direction that the game was going near the end there.

@Dalai said:

I'm just glad to know Sugar Plumps is doing fine. It's a potential GOTY contender for me.

That was almost exactly what bothered me about the ending. The interaction with Sugar Plumps added a fascinating element to the plot: A Journey-like attachment to another character set on the emotional/psychological trajectory of Spec Ops: The Line. It looked like it was aiming to slam you straight to rock bottom and then try to dig down further. To double back on that at the last second and say "just kidding! S.P.'s actually alive and relaxing on a beach, the sun's coming out, and you're off on your own brand new adventure!" squanders precisely what made the story compelling in the first place.

I think the highest point of the game was where the story hit it's lowest, the moment that S.P. offhandedly ponders "I wonder what the fire would look like if I got just a little bit closer..." For me that was the "oh man, things were weird before but shit's about to get real bad soon" moment.

Yet again, the Internet makes me buy a game with promise of wonders undreamt. Yet again, I find myself completely underwhelmed. I give the ending one giant fart noise out of five.

The build up is indeed very cool, but what they do with it ? Not so much.

The whole experience feels so vague and non-specific that it really lets you pull out whatever you want to read into it.

@BBAlpert said:

@Dalai said:

I'm just glad to know Sugar Plumps is doing fine. It's a potential GOTY contender for me.

That was almost exactly what bothered me about the ending. The interaction with Sugar Plumps added a fascinating element to the plot: A Journey-like attachment to another character set on the emotional/psychological trajectory of Spec Ops: The Line. It looked like it was aiming to slam you straight to rock bottom and then try to dig down further. To double back on that at the last second and say "just kidding! S.P.'s actually alive and relaxing on a beach, the sun's coming out, and you're off on your own brand new adventure!" squanders precisely what made the story compelling in the first place.

I think the highest point of the game was where the story hit it's lowest, the moment that S.P. offhandedly ponders "I wonder what the fire would look like if I got just a little bit closer..." For me that was the "oh man, things were weird before but shit's about to get real bad soon" moment.

I totally agree with this, I was really loving the dark turn of events that were happening by the time you reached the end of the game and I was just waiting for the worst once I hit outside. So it was really disappointing for me to see almost an easy way out on the sugar plumps thing. I thought it was going to be a twist and they were tricking you into thinking that she was on the beach. It just didn't make any sense, going from floating eyeball spirit to hanging out on the beach. You don't ever hear from her after that either, it left me looking to see if there was an alternate path in the game that I missed. Although I believe that may have been her typing at Tomorrow Corporation but I can't be sure.

The build up was nice but the ending was generally a let down. I felt like they were really going somewhere, but in the end it didn't really have much substance. I really enjoyed the graphical style of the world thought.

@CaptainTightPants: That is an argument I will say stands up! It does feel more like a $10 thing maybe, but given I enjoyed this way more than any movie I saw this year... given I don't really like movies, but I'm going on a tangent.

@redsoundwaves: Yeah but everyone was seeing that dark shit coming, besides reading all the dialogue over again its fully contextualized.

I can do a short psychological breakdown of my feelings at the moment to scientifically determine why i cried.

1. I beat the game late at night and was tired and my mental defenses where down.
2. I played the beta(right before launch) and did not even know if the game where finished and had no idea what to expect at all. ABSOLUTELY no expectations. i bought it purely based on the developers and what i know of them. I did not see the trailer nor anything else about the game before playing it.
3. I played through the game in one go whit the "story"/letters gripping me, getting emotional feelings about the characters. Building up to something.
4. The end came out of nowhere, I completely thought that the burning of items was 100% of the game. It was like a surprise back stab at my heart or a sudden stomach punch to my emotions.
5. I have issues in my life, I have no job and a mental scaring from when i was but a 4 year old child.
   SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

   The game chimed in unison with my life and for a short moment i just wanted to burn my house and leave to never return...

And those are some short points that might be some of the reasons that i cried... silly humans.

People are saying this a very powerful, and calling titles like Journey Game of the Year? What the hell is going on?!

I think this game would of been more deeper if all the dolls you were burning turned out to be real people and animals.,, It'd be a Spec Ops moment of who the true monster is.

@Huginrin said:

The end came out of nowhere, I completely thought that the burning of items was 100% of the game. It was like a surprise back stab at my heart or a sudden stomach punch to my emotions.

I had that ruined for me by Patrick in the ILM where he mentions it, which is annoying because I'd picked up on the clues of "An adventure that takes place almost entirely in front of a fireplace". I still loved the ending though, and what it said.

You either open your mind to art games to receive their message or you don't. It's not about the characters or the gameplay but what the game is telling you about yourself.

So....I loved the game a lot. Loved how it was going, loved the combo system. Thought it was awesome and then a certain thing happens in the last third, takes away something and il admit...i was upset. The game did something that made me feel upset, good for them....it then in the ending, became the most preachy thing ive seen since the credits of Eternal Sonata and even undid a very powerful moment. At that point, my attitude flipped and the game stopped being anything more then fluff. :/ Which is sad. I really loved it and loved the concept but it suddenly turned into "life lessons, in your face" and i do not like games that are so heavy handed. I don't play games to be told things like that. Yes, there is room for them in the world but the idea is your meant to be soft handed, not say the same message 9 times in the ending credits to make me as a player feel like i wasted time! :( I guess im the only one who feels like this?

@VooDooPC said:

I thought the ending was bad. The game took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to beat and I loved the gameplay, I finished it in one sitting. I hate when developers try to make their ending some deep life changing thing for the player, it's not, it's shallow and doesn't explain anything. Why does this place keep getting colder? Whats the deal with the face on the back of the fire place? Why does putting some things like sun glasses and a magnet in my fireplace make my house explode? How do I survive the explosion unscathed? Why does it take 30 seconds to open some damn gates to this company's building? Who's this old lady and why does she have a rocket ship? Why does my character even care? Why do I go with this creepy weather man on his balloon? The ending doesn't explain anything. All I get is a delivery man that comes inside my house to drop off my packages, a gate guard that used to be a bus driver, and a secretary that's writing a novel. All introduced for no reason in the last 5 minutes.

Yeh I thought the ending sucked aswell.

Watched it on the youtubes, didnt get it. Maybe I should have played the game?

Over the city. Over the smokestacks.

I think the ending was great. The key point is probably the briefness of life and the futile things we fill it up with. That go up a chimney. Just like we do.

At least you can always dream bigger.

@Colourful_Hippie said:

To YouTube I go.

Same here.

@Village_Guy said:

@Akyho said:

@Village_Guy said:

I'll play it on a different platform if it comes out there, I was absolutely delighted by World of Goo.

Its on pc right now. check it on steam. If i did get a WII U then i would definitly cry at tha low fps paperweight i baught. €ven little inferno has bad fps. Runs 100% with my computer so no worries there. Hope you buy it and enjoy it.

Awesome, thanks for the tip. I'll probably get it when I get back from work then :)

I played the Wii U version and it ran completely fine, if anything the sharpness of the game on the Gamepad makes it the best way to play the game.

So Little Inferno is probably the best game I have played on the Wii U so far, it's gameplay and story kept me going throughout the entire game. Figuring out the combo's, getting the letters and just the notion of finding out how each object reacts to fire. The ending was a fantastic and surprising way to end the story, the fact that it literally went from a physics based game to a adventure game with dialogue options just freaked me the fuck out. The gate opening scene and the bit with the postman were just amazing and when you think about it the postman part is very deep. The only part I was bummed about was that you didn't get to go and see Sugar Plumps, but I was happy to know she was alive, when she "died" it was a emotional experience.

I'm really considering this when it comes to GOTY, the game means the same to me as Journey did.

UPDATE - So if you beat the game and keep that free hug coupon you get about halfway through the game, the lady reveals to you that they haven't made any of those in years, suggesting you have been burning stuff for years and years.

@Huginrin said:

I can do a short psychological breakdown of my feelings at the moment to scientifically determine why i cried.

1. I beat the game late at night and was tired and my mental defenses where down.
2. I played the beta(right before launch) and did not even know if the game where finished and had no idea what to expect at all. ABSOLUTELY no expectations. i bought it purely based on the developers and what i know of them. I did not see the trailer nor anything else about the game before playing it.
3. I played through the game in one go whit the "story"/letters gripping me, getting emotional feelings about the characters. Building up to something.
4. The end came out of nowhere, I completely thought that the burning of items was 100% of the game. It was like a surprise back stab at my heart or a sudden stomach punch to my emotions.
5. I have issues in my life, I have no job and a mental scaring from when i was but a 4 year old child.
   SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

   The game chimed in unison with my life and for a short moment i just wanted to burn my house and leave to never return...

And those are some short points that might be some of the reasons that i cried... silly humans.

I felt the same way, and the game made me weepy, too. In a cleansing, bolstering sort of way.

I was head over heels for World of Goo, so I probably should have expected some sentiment out of this game, but I didn't. It snuck up on me, and I'm glad it did. It was a pleasant surprise that I'd love to share, but I suspect it won't resonate similarly for everyone.

Great little game. I just finished it and did not expect it to go where it did in the end. I found the letters throughout the game very interesting and propelled me through the game almost all in one sitting. More than the ending, there was a part in about the midpoint of the game that really kind of hit me more than I thought it would. I won't go into detail but it was pretty powerful and made me realize that the game was more than just burning stuff in a fireplace. It's amazing what the developers did with just music, some animation and some sparse text.

I really want to know, but I guess I let this be. I will never own a Wii U, but there is probably a decent chance the game will come out on PC or something in the future.

@The_Laughing_Man said:

@Zaccheus

I really want to know, but I guess I let this be. I will never own a Wii U, but there is probably a decent chance the game will come out on PC or something in the future.

It is on PC

And it was pointed out to me over a month ago in this topic after which I played the game. Thanks anyway.

@k9 said:

This was my reaction to the thread as well. The ending is intriguing at best, but I'm actually surprised to hear that people found it emotionally moving. The line where they say that some of Tomorrow Corporation's past work includes "Your Childhood: The Game" gave me pause for a moment, because dang, game, you got my number. But that was more of a "Shit game, you're right", and I wasn't about to tear up or anything.

I don't think you understand metaphor very well. Not every story is "guy goes from A to B, solves problem C, everything is literal and fully explained". "Why does this place keep getting colder" is actually worth thinking about, and I imagine is left intentionally ambiguous. But if you actually want concrete answers to all of the unimportant questions you raised, then I suspect you missed any points the game might've been going for.

Read some more books? Look at some literary criticism? Finish high school? One or more of those is probably recommended. The game isn't like a masterpiece of games writing, but you seem to be adamantly ignoring any point the game is making because it doesn't present it in an obvious way.

I bet you wouldn't even like the ending of Hotline Miami. Everyone should like the ending of Hotline Miami.