The Unread is a free, gory browser game that hooks into your Gmail, and every zombie you take down is a spam email you’ll never have to see again.
I’m going to be honest with you. I’m no fan of the horror genre. Scary movies stress me out. And I don’t much enjoy video games like Silent Hill. No thanks. But if you make it about zombies, I’m in. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because I know where I am with the shuffling hungry dead. Or maybe it’s because the premise is far too absurd to be anything but funny. Who knows. But it’s handy, since the zombies in this case aren’t after my brains anyway; they’ve crawled into my inbox.
Just in time for Halloween, Uncommon Creative Studio and digital studio Resn have launched The Unread, a free browser game that connects with Gmail and turns your unread messages into the undead. Brilliant. Your job is to take them down. Every zombie you kill destroys an unwanted email. Yes, it’s gory. Unhinged, definitely. But it’s a nice way to kill some time and get your admin done.
There are two ways to play. Slaughter Mode is full-on commitment. You connect your Gmail, and it moves unwanted emails straight to the trash. “Total annihilation,” as the makers put it. Voyeur Mode, meanwhile, is a more cautious game. It has no email connection, and play runs only through the first level. I think most of you will enjoy this mode.
Why gamify the inbox? There’s actually some real thinking behind the game. According to research the team cited, the average person has more than 1,000 unread emails, a figure that climbs to 1,200 after a two-week holiday. Only 24% of the emails we receive are classed as “important”, and the other 76% are irrelevant or low priority. Despite all this, each one takes the same mental effort to deal with. Even now, I’m stressing over the 20 urgent emails I still haven’t replied to. They hang over my head like a dark cloud.
“Most tools designed to ‘fix’ our digital lives remove emotion from the experience. We wanted to do the opposite,” says Nils Leonard, co-founder of Uncommon. “The Unread is intentionally visceral, silly, cathartic and entertaining. It’s a utility disguised as a game – or maybe a game disguised as a utility. It prompts us to think: what if automation isn’t the only answer to digital overload? Perhaps play, humour and interaction can be just as effective at motivating behaviour.”
It’s hard to disagree. Rik Campbell, CEO of Resn, adds: “Everyone wants to make tedious jobs more efficient. But what if you just made them fun? The Unread weaponises the instinct to procrastinate and makes clearing out your inbox something to look forward to.”
Well, I must say, a zombie massacre to clear out my inbox is rather appealing. But why bother creating such a game when there’s no clear client or brief behind it? Because self-initiated projects are always a clever way to show off, and they undoubtedly lead to opportunities.
You can play The Unread and find out more about the project on Uncommon’s Medium.
