14 DAY TRIAL // Gmail is certainly a popular app. And as any popular app it has its number of fans, bordering on zealots. But is it popular enough to get its own game? Paul Truong seems to think so, but he does work for Google, so he may be a little biased.
Regardless, he spent his 20 percent time, the amount of time Google engineers are able, or rather, are required to spend on their own personal projects, to create Galactic Inbox, informally known as “Gmail: The Game.”
“Webmail has come a long way in the past few years but it’s all too easy to take for granted practically unlimited inbox capacities and responsive interfaces backed by the power of search,” Paul Truong, Creative Technologist at Google, wrote. Yes, that’s his official title.
“While I’m not on the Gmail team, I felt a little celebration of how far we’ve come was in order, so I wrote a little HTML5 game, in part as a ‘thank you’ to the Gmail team for their ongoing work to improve the webmail galaxy. If you’re into games, or just like the idea of flying m-velopes that shoot bad guys, give it a try,” he added.
The game looks pretty slick, the graphics don’t disappoint, though the gameplay is not exactly innovative. Basically, you fly around with the ‘m-velope’ Gmail logo and shoot at stuff.
It’s a simple scrolling shooter, you’ve been seeing these for three decades or so. Other than the logo, though, it doesn’t really have that much to do with Gmail. Still, it can be fun for a few minutes.
But it does serve another purpose, to evangelize HTML5 as, you’ve guessed it, Galactic Inbox is built entirely using HTML5. At this point, most browsers out there offer good support for HTML5, even the upcoming Internet Explorer 9.
