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Average Rating: Number of Ratings: 3 Write a review

>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction

Well, if there's a prize for shortest competition game, E-MAILBOX will win it hands down. Clocking in at just under ten minutes, it barely gets off the ground before telling you either that you've won or that you've just met your death by having your body's cells torn apart from one another. Not much of a menu, but at least either way the end comes quickly. The game purports to be "A true story based on actual events that occurred to a real individual," but is written in a broad, exaggerated tone that is probably meant to be burlesque. It's funny, in a limited kind of way, but it's hard for the game to do very much when it ends so quickly.

- Edo, March 3, 2021

This 1997 IFComp game shows to me how Twine didn't ruin parser games and IFComp; if this game had been entered in the 2010's, it would certainly have been a short twine game. I feel like authors are writing the same games, just on more appropriate platforms.

You spend most of the time typing well-clued commands and pressing enter a lot, and it's short. Its clear the author just wanted to write something short and fun. You play as a digital avatar near the digital highway, opening your digital mailbox for the first time.

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- Miron (Berlin, Germany), December 11, 2007

Baf's Guide

Tiny game about getting mailbombed. You check your mail, you get bombed, you reinstall the program. Takes about five minutes, tops, to play. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing very exciting, either.

-- Duncan Stevens