A Game Makes Email Cleaning More Fun

Cleaning emails can feel boring, but The Unread offers another choice. This free game makes unwanted messages look like zombies. Zombies are dead people who move in horror stories. Players fight the zombies while doing a real email task. Uncommon Creative Studio and Resn made the game for Halloween. They want people to enjoy a job they often avoid.

The game works in a browser and has two different modes. In Slaughter Mode, players connect their Gmail account to the game. When they kill a zombie, an unwanted email moves to the trash. The action in the game changes something in their email account. Playing and cleaning emails become parts of the same activity.

People can also try the game without connecting their email account. This option is called Voyeur Mode and includes the first level. It lets people play without making changes to their messages. The two modes offer different ways to experience the same idea.

The makers point to research about how much email people receive. It says people have more than 1,000 unread emails on average. After a two-week holiday, that number can reach 1,200. Only 24% of received emails are seen as important. The other 76% are less important or not useful. Still, people must spend time and effort dealing with them.

The makers do not only ask how to finish work faster. They also ask how to make people want to do it. Their answer combines play, funny ideas, and direct action. The game shows a different approach to an everyday task. Something people put off can become something they want to try.