I was working on my game, and I was wondering if we were allowed to add a button separate from the gameplay to pause the game? Since I have all my buttons pretty tightly knit into the gameplay, I didn't want to make it any more complicated or wired by having the pause button being something like pressing all buttons at the same time. I was wondering if we were allowed to just add ESC and have a normal pause button since pausing isn't technically part of the gameplay, and I personally would just add it in after the game jam is over (post judging) anyway?

Unfortunately, for the sake of the jam, a pause action must count as one of the three buttons, since it does halt gameplay and therefore affect it. Most jam games don’t even bother with a pause button, though, so you should be fine waiting to add it post-jam.