Howdy Howdy, welcome to the jam. 

For this jam, you will be making what I like to call haiku lyric games, meaning that you have around three to six lines to tell a whole poetic lyric game, and no you do not have to follow the five seven five syllable rule of a haiku, you may do so if you want that extra challenge. The whole purpose of this jam is to invite other people to play and make games in a format I created for my games that I've also grown quite fond of, fond enough to start a whole magazine around. 

First, let's go over the structure of a haiku lyric game. The main body of a haiku lyric game is the main poem, which consists of a three-line poem, or ritual the player has to follow. This right here can be anything that your heart desires. For example, in one of the haiku lyric games that I wrote, I have this section: 

Find a friend, or make a new one. 

Look up at the clouds, 

Take turns describing how the clouds remind you of each other. 

This is just an example, you can really have whatever you want in this section. Go nuts. Let your imagination run wild. This is your game at the end of the day. If you do want an extra challenge, try writing this as an actual haiku poem, but if you don't want to you don't have to. You can also write this as a three-line prose poem, or even a three-line free verse poem. 

Then you have the title and the name of your poem. I don't know, I like the name of the poem after the poem. It just reads nicely to me. But yeah, this is where your title will be going, bold and underlined. We all know how important a title can be in contextualizing a poem, working as the metaphorical store sign. For my game, the same one mentioned up above, my title was: 

Clouds 

I think that works well enough. The game is about watching clouds. It tells you everything that you need to know.

After this, you have another two optional lines. These are your additional rule lines. These additional rules can be used to add additional rules and context on how players respond to your game. For example, in my game I have: 

Respond with a three-line poem about how you feel. 

This additional rule, allows the player to sit down and reflect on the main ritual, allowing them to process their emotions and sit down and think about how they feel. Your additional rule can do something similar, or it can do something completely wild. Also if you want an additional challenge, forgo the additional rules altogether, and try to keep your entire game to just the haiku segment. 

And that is how you write a haiku lyric game. Now comes the fun part, what this game jam is all about. The games made for this jam will be up for consideration for a magazine, or zine anthology of games called Haiku magazine. Selected games, twenty-two of which, will be chosen for the print edition, and creators will be paid fifty dollars per page. Please keep your designed pages to digest size, as this will help immensely with the printing of the book. Any games not of this size will not be considered.

Also if you want, or need, a theme to make your game the optional theme is oh my god, what is that? Is that a capybara? You do not need to use this. Please feel free to ignore it. I just thought it would be fun to play a bunch of capybara games that is all. 

Thank you for considering my game jam, I hope it's not too restrictive. Have fun making your game. Oh, and adjust the form and the rules of the haiku lyric game to your heart's content, make this format your own.