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Number of Ratings: 110
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Showing All | Show by Page - caligula jones, March 23, 2024
- comfysynth, January 22, 2024
- Edo, August 17, 2023
- raebae, June 24, 2023
- egostat (1st Level, Abyss), April 14, 2023
- manonamora, January 19, 2023
- Cerfeuil (*Teleports Behind You* Nothing Personnel, Kid), January 9, 2023
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2 people found the following review helpful:
Pick Up the Game and Be Underwhelmed, January 1, 2023Looking back at the game now, it doesn't seem that revolutionary or interesting. It's almost a troll game, if anything. Games like Aisle have done its concept so much better.
What it says on the tin, May 20, 2022Excellent deadpan humor. I was not expecting it to be possible to actually be able to win this game, so it was extra hilarious when I stumbled on the win condition.
- Rovarsson (Belgium), April 23, 2022
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1 people found the following review helpful:
A simple joke game, February 8, 2022by Cody Gaisser (Florence, Alabama, United States of America, North America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Known Universe, ???) Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die is based around one simple joke (see the title). There are two endings, each funny but neither hilarious. The game is famous within the interactive fiction community and gets referenced a lot, so play it if you want to understand the references (it's so short, you might as well).
- Jacoder23, December 12, 2021
- civilstat (Maine, USA), October 21, 2021
- Malasana, June 20, 2021
- knockupwood, May 23, 2021
- TheAncientOne, March 7, 2021
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5 people found the following review helpful:
Clever But Underimplemented, December 13, 2020This is certainly a minimalistic work, but the title actually undersells it. In a clever twist, picking up the phone booth and dying is only half of what Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die has to offer. Uncovering the other half is the real challenge here.
There are a lot of things I like about this game. It's efficient, in that it manages to pack a lot of punch into an extremely small package - with only two potential actions of consequence, only one of which can be executed in a single playthrough. The metatextual aspect, using the game's title to give crucial information even before play begins, is a neat trick as well.
But it has to be said that the game is woefully under-implemented. There are quite a few things that are described in the text but not implemented as objects: the town, the square, the smiley face. There are also quite a few default failure responses to actions that really ought to have been given more attention. I was disappointed, for example, that smelling or touching the phone booth yields only Inform's default message. With a world this small, it would have been relatively easy to really focus on the details, but unfortunately they haven't received so much care.
At the core of this game is a pretty good joke. But I feel that the best jokes are those which go all-out. Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die, unfortunately, does not.
- Jason Lautzenheiser (Navarre, Ohio), September 7, 2020
- Elizabeth DeCoste (Canada), April 4, 2020
- nf, November 1, 2019
- Zape, July 4, 2019
- AndyRobot, May 16, 2019
- Karl Ove Hufthammer (Bergen, Norway), November 16, 2018
- AKheon (Finland), September 10, 2018
- DustyCypress (Hong Kong), May 19, 2018
- Oblivion, February 6, 2018
- nosferatu, January 30, 2018
- beriaearwen, October 10, 2017
- mrfrobozzo, July 25, 2017
- lkdc, January 31, 2017
- SciFinn (Alberta, Canada), December 14, 2016
- Audiart (Davis, CA), November 3, 2016
- jeffhos, October 13, 2016
- sadcarnival (Australia), June 19, 2016
- Denk, May 1, 2016
- zylla, April 27, 2016
- Merodacha (United States), April 18, 2016
- Teaspoon, March 26, 2016
- Oreolek (Kemerovo, Russia), February 6, 2016
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4 people found the following review helpful:
A silly but well-known game, February 3, 2016Pick up the phone booth and die has one idea: try picking up the phone booth. Then die. Exactly one related action will win the game instead.
I had always heard of this game, and played it once or twice. After deciding to write this review, I investigated its history. It seems it was nominated for an XYZZY award for Best Puzzle in 1997. It was simultaneously released with a demo for Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die, part 2, which is still available as a demo on ifdb.
Most of the praise the game receives is due to its minimalism.You might as well try it because it is so short.
It inspired the much better game, Pick Up The Phone Booth and Aisle, which parodies both this game and Aisle (where every action ends the game in a different ending).
- Janice M. Eisen (Portland, Oregon), December 6, 2015
- chairbender, December 1, 2015
- nonnamethankyou, September 29, 2015
- thebloopatroopa, June 3, 2015
- CMG (NYC), March 29, 2015
- Simon Deimel (Germany), March 16, 2015
- Sobol (Russia), September 12, 2014
- Snave, March 7, 2014
- lisapaul, January 9, 2014
- Molly (USA), December 22, 2013
- grainne6, October 29, 2013
- Indigo9182, August 14, 2013
- Floating Info, April 11, 2013
- Zepton (Canada), April 6, 2013
- E.K., February 22, 2013
- Edward Lacey (Oxford, England), February 3, 2013
- Stewjar (USA), January 29, 2013
- kala (Finland), October 15, 2012
- AADA7A, September 24, 2012
- liz73 (Cornwall, New York), June 25, 2012
- RekoOne, March 29, 2012
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6 people found the following review helpful:
Other Games Do It Better, March 25, 2012Play it if: you have fairly low standards for joke IF.
Don't play it if: you prefer a bit more elegance in your parodies.
In brief, Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die is a punchline game, where the whole point of the thing is just one big joke. This doesn't have to make it bad, but while games such as Adam Cadre's 9:05 and even Ian Haberkorn's Conan Kill Everything accomplish this with some degree of elegance, Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die has basically no replay value - because its joke is one-note. A funnier and thus more effective game might have resulted if the objective had been to avoid picking up the phone booth at all costs, in spite of various incentives to do so.
There's not much to say about a game that has so little to recommend it and so little to damn it. It's too insubstantial to even be considered a waste of time, but that's not really a good reason to play it, is it?
- trojo (Huntsville, Alabama, USA), November 1, 2011
- RichCheng (Warwickshire, UK), September 13, 2011
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5 people found the following review helpful:
Ha ha., August 2, 2011A joke game that wasn't that funny; but at least it wasn't annoying.
- Ryan Veeder (Australia), July 15, 2011
- futureman44203 (Ocala, Florida), June 11, 2011
- flamingoboots, May 29, 2011
- Rotonoto (Albuquerque, New Mexico), May 16, 2011
- baywoof, April 25, 2011
- JohnW (Brno, Czech Republic), March 16, 2011
- Fredrik (Nässjö, Sweden), February 16, 2011
- Ben Cressey (Seattle, WA), February 2, 2011
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7 people found the following review helpful:
Pointless, February 2, 2011Just read the title instead.
- Aintelligence (Canada), December 22, 2010
- S. Plumb, December 21, 2010
- AmberShards (The Gothic South), November 14, 2010
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16 people found the following review helpful:
Don't be hating, November 2, 2010Okay, it's clearly a joke game. And yes, it's a one room game with only one item in it- the phone booth.
And as the title says, if you pick up the phone booth, you will die.
The writing is very cute. I enjoy how it your score is related, whether you die or win. (Yes, there is a winning ending). Despite other reviews, it's really not all that hard to find- I found it on my second try (after picking it up, of course!)
Don't expect too much, it's a joke game. But I've played others that aren't funny. This one was. Play it for a laugh. Then move on. But don't hate on it, because it does well what it promises to do.
- Stickz (Atlanta, Georgia), June 23, 2010
- Christopher Bogs, April 21, 2010
- Doug Orleans (Somerville, MA, USA), April 18, 2010
- Felix Larsson (Gothenburg, Sweden), January 18, 2010
- Otto (France), January 4, 2010
- loungeman (Bilbao, Spain), January 4, 2010
- Nusco (Bologna, Italy), December 5, 2009
- LuigiThirty, September 18, 2009
- Juhana, July 9, 2009
- Nicholas, June 14, 2009
- Hipster Scumbag, May 4, 2009
- Zharradan, March 10, 2009
- Ghalev (Northern Appalachia, United States), February 12, 2009
- Aaron Mumaw (Appalachia), December 22, 2008
- Samuel Verschelde (Stormi) (Lyon, France), October 24, 2008
- AardvarkSoup (IJmuiden), September 25, 2008
- Quitch (UK), August 24, 2008
- Rose (New Zealand), July 6, 2008
- felicitations, May 3, 2008
- lobespear, April 23, 2008
- Emily Boegheim, April 21, 2008
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15 people found the following review helpful:
Disappointing, April 21, 2008There's just not enough here to satisfy. One does not expect a joke game to be a great work of art, but does expect (or rather hope) that it should be funny. PUTPBAD isn't very funny to begin with, and I don't particularly like the style of 'humour' that relies on insulting the player, as PUTPBAD does when you lose. Winning, too, is unsatisfying, and the humour is similarly unamusing, though not abusive.
In short, the only thing this game has to recommend it is that it is well-known. It is not worth playing for its own sake.
- jfpbookworm (Hamburg, New York), February 25, 2008
- tfbk, January 10, 2008
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12 people found the following review helpful:
A one-joke game, December 29, 2007I only played this because I'd heard you need to play it in order to enjoy Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle. It turns out you don't. If you like one-joke games, play this; if you don't, don't.
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9 people found the following review helpful:
Read this review and die, December 25, 2007Probably one of the most controversial games in the history of IF. The humor isn't the best one around and the puzzle is quite hard without a walkthrough.
- Matt Kimmel (Cambridge, MA), December 11, 2007
- Miron (Berlin, Germany), December 11, 2007
- ErWenn (Bloomington, IN), November 18, 2007
- Stephen Bond (Leuven, Belgium), October 26, 2007
- Pseudo_Intellectual (Vancouver, Canada), October 25, 2007
- Michael R. Bacon (New Mexico), October 20, 2007
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