In February 2020, I entered a Twine game into the Green Stories Interactive Fiction Competition. The brief for the competition was to include ideas about sustainability or showcase green ideas in some way. It was in the top ten entries.
Inbox Zero is an epistolary piece of interactive fiction told through a series of emails. V, an old friend of player character M, is embarking on a new life as part of a co-operative community based in a former ghost town on the fictional island of St Jude. The inhabitants are aiming to live as sustainably as possible, repurposing the existing derelict buildings and investing in renewable energy. However, V and M struggle to sustain their long-distance friendship when it turns out M’s old flame is also living on the island.
As this was my first Twine game, I stuck to a linear narrative structure with the string of emails forming the main spine of the story. This allowed me to create some interesting divergences in the form of email attachments and links to fictional websites. It was a fun challenge to create strong characterisation through a mostly one-sided conversation.
Inbox Zero can be downloaded from itch.io.
Florence Smith Nicholls 