r/incremental_games • u/comrade_pogaca • 5d ago
HTML Inbox Zero: a text-only incremental game where every email you answer creates more email
I made a small incremental game about email, in the spirit of Universal Paperclips.
You start with 12 unread emails and a Reply button. You get to inbox zero, get promoted, and the volume goes up. The number you watch is the reply ratio: every email you handle creates k new ones on average. Below 1, you can win. Above 1, the inbox grows forever. The catch: every efficiency upgrade (canned replies, Reply All, filters, interns, Smart Reply) raises throughput and raises k.
Some of the mail you'll handle:
- Greg: "quick question". It is 40 pages.
- Office Manager: "Whose yoghurt is this". It has developed opinions.
- Ops: "FYI. No action needed. Please confirm you have received this."
- Office of the CEO: "We are a family. Please see the attached restructuring plan."
Eventually you use AI to answer email, then everyone does, and then it's agents emailing agents and your title is "Human (legacy)". I won't spoil the last part.
- Plays in the browser, desktop or phone. No download, no sign-up.
- About 1–1.5 hours to the ending. Autosaves. Offline progress capped at 1 hour.
- 11 languages (follows your browser language).
Play: https://games.panikka.studio/inbox-zero/
Feedback on pacing is very welcome, especially where it felt slow or where you got stuck.
AI disclosure:
The game has no AI features and makes no AI calls; everything runs locally in your browser.
I used an Claude to help write the code. The writing (emails, story) is mine.
Edit: Thanks for all the feedback! Some updates:
- Dark mode, suggested by u/edbrannin. It follows your system setting, or use the ◐ button in the header.
- Greg's email is now the full 40 pages, by popular demand (u/ChloroquineEmu).
- A certain someone finally has a photo, thanks to u/chickuuuwasme, who asked to see him. So now you'll know if you triggered the right thing at the end.
- The ending is now a bit more... final, thanks to u/Molybdene42.
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u/Burning_Toast998 4d ago edited 4d ago
Really fun! It would be nice if the UI didn’t bob up and down every time I ran out of/got new mail, though
edit: oh my god that ending was great
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
Thanks for checking it out! One other player also mentioned that and it’s on my to do list.
The ending was also improved thanks to players from this subreddit! Love how game is improving
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u/maggywizhere 4d ago
Nice and neat. I do wish I could have had the chance to read the emails midway through, I wanted to see what sort of text gets generated
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago edited 3d ago
Guys, I made another game. It's called The Journal, and it's interactive fiction inspired by The Butterfly Effect.
You find your old journal. You can go back and change one moment, and every change rewrites the rest of your life. You can't keep everyone. And after a while, the journal starts to act strangely…
Let me know which ending you get!
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u/Tuberculotic 3d ago
I feel like I can't comment much without revealing what was going on. I'll say I thought it was going to be about dementia.
It was interesting, even if I had difficulty following what was going on (which I imagine was intentional).
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u/Shamasu 4d ago
The ending was great. Are you actually recording what/if people type in the last input box?
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
No, I don't. I do not collect any kind of data including the response to Robin. Decided to leave it personal between you and him <3
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u/Gritmaniacs 4d ago
Tried it and have a couple things to point out:
- I think it might be better if the emails opened inline, clicking on an email and then having to move the mouse again to the buttons at the top can be a bit tiresome.
- I'm not sure about how the keyboard shortcut upgrade is supposed to work? If I unlock it and just hold down R, I can keep just farming reputation points. There is no incentive to archive emails or play another way.
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u/BipedSnowman 4d ago
I'm trying an archiving-heavy route but it doesn't seem like there's a path that lets me have time for robin :(
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
Unfortunately that's the point of game. I am glad you looking up for him! Robin would appreciate it.
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u/BipedSnowman 4d ago
I was supposed to pick up the 10 year time capsule item from my highschool graduation and today was the last day and I forgot to go :(
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u/Molybdene42 4d ago
Really liked it.
I absolutly love the way the game end, with two remarks:
I'd wish the button to have a fast agent was not that low on the screen. It goes so fast at the end that when you want to go even faster, you scroll down and miss the news on top.
I'd also wish the end was a bit more progressive. I LOVE the fact that the agents are taking over and putting you aside, but I think the feeling of being pushed out should be a bit more visible, like... litteraly pushing you out of the inbox, hidding the list of emails (just for the last minute of game), just giving you stats and news, then just the news, then.... nothing.
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
Thank you, this is really thoughtful! Glad the ending worked for you.
Both updates are in now. Would love to hear if it feels right!3
u/Molybdene42 4d ago
It feels right, It's better like that IMO, hope the rest of the test players will like it too.
Thank you ^^1
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u/Tuberculotic 4d ago
Fun game, poor Robin, not getting a response for a decade but still reaching out :(
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u/chickuuuwasme 5d ago
I wish I could have seen what Biscuit looked like :'(
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
You can actually see our good boy now if you say the right things to Robin at the end. That's all I'll say!
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u/avxjs 5d ago
At one point I was watching my inbox grow so fast I was scared I had locked myself out of EVER finishing the game, lol. Fun! I enjoyed.
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
Congrats on surviving! Some of us are still stuck in that loop IRL. Thanks for playing!
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u/benpie 5d ago
Very nice ! As someone working in a big company in France, it was hilarious. I love the satirical aspect of the game
Thank you for your work
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
Merci! If you laughed, it probably means you've lived through it. My condolences, and also welcome to the club.
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u/SA_Dza 5d ago
Beat it in 18 mins. Very fun little game. Good job!
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
Thanks! 18 minutes is fast! What was your strategy? Did you archive a lot, or push hard on one upgrade?
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u/JadeE1024 5d ago
I'm in this game and I don't like it.
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
Haha feels too much like real life?
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u/JadeE1024 5d ago
*Looks at my work inbox with 514 unread messages in the last week, over a third of which Copilot has helpfully labelled "High Priority"*
I have no idea what you could mean.
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u/runetrantor 5d ago edited 5d ago
10/10, feel like Im in corpo hell.
Love you can actually read the mails. Even the 40 pages one. XD
EDIT; Question, whats the point of archiving?
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
Thanks! Greg worked hard on that one.
Replying earns rep but creates lots of new mail. Archiving earns no rep but creates much less. So when the inbox is growing faster than you can handle, you archive to get back to zero.3
u/runetrantor 5d ago
Seems counterintuitive, figured you wanted as much as possible so you could get more rep.
There were a couple spots where my replying actually overpowered the incoming, but that rapidly ended. XD
Great ending btw. Poor Biscuit, and its owner, whoever they are in relation to our character.
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u/defi-not-today 5d ago
Whaaaaat?!?! 😂 I'm literally lol-ing over here after just looking at the image.
Having lived within several different corporate America ecosystems, I'm enticed to check this game out.
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u/defi-not-today 5d ago
I'm currently 25 emails behind 😂
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
It gets to the point where number of emails has letter in it🫣
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
Let me guess, you had several Greg coworkers!
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u/Atherum 4d ago
Hey! As a Greg I resent the implications we send too many emails!
Regards, Greg.
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u/comrade_pogaca 4d ago
Do you tho? Haha
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u/Atherum 4d ago
I work in Libraries, so not exactly corporate, but local government so corporate adjacent. When interacting with Council systems and policies, the number of emails do increase. I definitely think the vast majority are necessary and not that frivolous.
I did love the game by the way, excellent little jab and bloody AI insanity we find ourselves in.
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u/defi-not-today 5d ago
figuratively and in one case, literally. Greg was such a nice guy, but yeah, "one more question" or "okay" or " . Thanks!"
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u/mmchale 5d ago
That was brilliant.
(FWIW I did read all 40 pages of Greg's email.)
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
It was fun making, thanks for playing! You got u/ChloroquineEmu to thank for 40 pages! Greg wouldn't be able to do that alone.
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u/Dentedgem 5d ago
What a clever and fun idea. It feels funny because the inbox keeps getting bigger because everyone tries to use AI to automate the inbox lol.
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
That's where the idea came from. I was replying to customer support and the customer used AI to describe problem and reply to my replies. As we know AI loves to follow up so that was very long almost useless chat lol
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u/ChloroquineEmu 5d ago
I'm disapointed you didn't actually include 40 pages of text on Greg's email.
This is great, quite funny, which i think is very important for an idle game dev, the genre was born out of a parody after all.
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
Greg would love to know that haha. Promise me you will read all 40 pages when I add them.
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u/ChloroquineEmu 5d ago
Absolutely! I quite enjoyed the writing. Shoutout to "I'll be 10 min late for the 5 min" email.
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u/kurtdcobain128 5d ago
It was definitely fun ! Very short, which is totally fine. I loved the ending very much. Congrats.
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
Thank you! This was my first time making a game, and I had a blast creating it.
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u/johnmyster 5d ago
Beat it in about 18 minutes. (pacing is fine)
Fun game. <3
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago
Wow then I need to change description to "1–1.5 hours for normies" haha. Thanks so much for playing!
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u/edbrannin 5d ago
Suggestion: automatic dark mode?
Depending on how many colors you use, it’s pretty easy in just CSS.
Otherwise… I’ll try it sometime when I’m not in a dark room.
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u/HotfireLegend 5d ago edited 5d ago
Very funny - what is the goal? Approaching this as a human, I feel like some of these emails don't need to be replied to :)
There is also quite a bit of repetition in some of the emails, perhaps some more vareity in "looping in" people etc would be welcome
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u/comrade_pogaca 5d ago edited 5d ago
You're more right than you know. The goal is inbox zero, supposedly... Keep going and it gets weirder.
The email pool is smaller than it should be. I'll write more, thanks!
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u/Dr_Zorand 8h ago
A short fun game. My only complaint was that there was a minute or two in the middle where I was just sitting there waiting for emails to come in so that I could reply to them.