Seems to use the psychological technique of intermittent rewards to encourage continued clicking of "stoke the fire." Unfortunately after about 4 stokings with no new developments in the game, I got bored and quit.
In this and candy box you're not really supposed to pay attention to the window for the first couple minutes. There is literally nothing to do.
Then later once you're maybe 10 minutes in you can switch away for extended times if you want to wait for the continuous income, no need to press buttons, no 'intermittent rewards'.
It could be changed but it's not actually depending on any kind of psychological tricks. The delays are just a minor throttle at the start.
Edit: Actually, to be precise, you only have to stoke the fire once. It's just a deliberately paced cutscene. No psychology there.
> In this and candy box you're not really supposed to pay attention to the window for the first couple minutes. There is literally nothing to do.
Yeah, interesting call, that. When I played Candybox, I was told "before you dismiss So what it, wait until you get 60 candies, then shit gets real".
So, what does a self-respecting hacker do, when faced with 60 seconds of "literally nothing to do" ... except the challenge of opening the JS Console to see if I can make that counter run faster, preferably in less than 60 seconds? ;-)
After two times stoking the fire the room changes from cold to mild. There is also a shivering stranger stumbling into the room. Of course you can still be bored by that, but it is not true, that there is no new development.