Little Inferno (2012) 6.5/10
Human Resource Machine (2015)
7 Billion Humans (2018)
For obvious reasons, I was skeptical that a game built upon the absurdly minimal idea of sitting still and setting fire to a random array of objects would keep my attention long enough to play til the end, let alone rate and review for this site. But then I beat Little Inferno in a single playthrough in what felt like minutes without noticing it had been hours.
Clearly the game was contrived to feel bizarre: set in this disturbing dystopian future where global freezing has become a bigger problem than global warming, filled with characters designed with an artistry akin to the style of Tim Burton, and written with a sense of humor so dark and twisted you wouldn't spot it in a bag of black licorice.
The unsettling atmosphere is meant to be uncomfortable to enhance the game's comedy, which in turn is used to juxtapose its sudden bursts of seriousness. But for real, the sheer bleakness of Little Inferno is actually really funny! There's already something comical in presenting a mundane fireplace as a safe and marketable children's toy to channel one's suppressed pyromania; but to add hysterical twists to the "deaths" of various items just makes the game funny to the point you actually start feel insulted by the other "comedy" games that don't even make you smile.
Alas, the fun doesn't last very long. The story takes some rough turns to reach an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion; but it was never the story that I totally cared about; I delighted in the idiot-proof gameplay concept that the developers exploited as far as they could, squeezing every shocking novelty there is in the scenario, which was all great comedy and bleak storytelling.
Little Inferno is worth the small price it demands. Albeit brief, the humor here is exclusive to interaction -- unable to make with other mediums like films or books, since the jokes are practical to the player -- so play it if you don't want to miss out on some good "interactive" jokes.