Pick Up The Phone Booth and Die

spatch.net home | toys and diversions > games | pictures | store

welcome to the home page of the stupidest game ever known to man.

I do hereby certify that absolutely no
forethought went into the making of this game. Signed, tv's Spatch

Hey! Check out the new Java implementation!

Here's what some folks have said about PUTPBAD:

"I sense low-B text adventure coming on... Low-B... stupid... one in the same, really."

- Chester (Flat) Karma, no relation to Lord Dimwit Flathead

"DAMN YOU!"

- Liza Daly

"I'm sorry , but... Here's the truth, IT SUCKED!"

- Heather Henning

"I can't believe I've just spent all evening playing that stoopid game. I still haven't a [ ] and all I've won so far are five chickens and a cow--and they ran off!"

- Bill Wilkinson

"I liked it."

- Andrew Plotkin

'Boring'
Noted game show funnyman Charles Nelson Reilly gives PUTPBAD his own personal endorsement.
Picture shamelessly stolen from the Match Game homepage.

What's all the fuss about, anyway?

Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die is a stoopid piece of interactive fiction (that's "text adventure" to you unwashed heathen) written in Inform, a language developed by Graham Nelson solely for the purpose of writing interactive fiction, and I'm pretty sure Graham never had this in mind when creating the thing. (Although he is a rather imaginative fellow, that Graham...) This game has a very simple premise:

1: You are in a single room with a phone booth.
2: If you pick up the phone booth, you'll die.

Well? Is that an amazingly original premise or what?! Imagine the hours of fun you could have sitting around in this room (a Town Square) avoiding picking the phone booth up!

Well, there is a way to win the game, and as mentioned in alt.stupidity, it doesn't involve not playing the game. You'll just have to figure it out yourself. So there.

Versions and upcoming projects

PUTPBAD is currently (and eternally) in version 1.1, though the compiler said the release number was 619. Just humor it, we all do. This version fixes a bug in which no score was given after you actually win the game. (Um, oops.) It's been readily available since 1996.

The sequel to PUTPBAD (working title Pick Up The Phone Booth and Die 2: For Graduates of Pick Up The Phone Booth and Die) has been in the works for over four years. Much like Daikatana! Maybe someday it will come to be. A quick, five-room demo was written up a long time ago and shows off just some of the fun fun features that could very well make it into the finished version. Also, the fountain will have water in it.

If you liked PUTPBAD and its subsidiaries, you will surely also detest the author's other quickly-written games.

How to get PUTPBAD

You can easily download Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die in its compiled state in the following ways:

Online Play

Java Phone Booth Thingy Click Click Click
Compiled story file
booth.z5 [45K]

If you want to use the compiled story file, you'll need to download a program called an interpreter that, big surprise here, interprets the .Z5 story file and runs it for you. The GMD IF-Archive is a great place to find such programs.

The source code won't be released, because if you are so desperate as to look through the source of this game to find out how not to pick the phone booth up, you should just go back to whatever other games you've been playing. I bet you couldn't even get into the book in Myst. Also, er, I lost the source.