Take the road or the shortcut through the forest. You can help the girl or just go on your way. Choices, choices, choices. Gamebooks are amazing experiences, and for kids in the 80s and 90s, they were a great way to encourage reading and imagination.

But today, reading a whole book feels exhausting, but thankfully, just like with TTRPG rule-lite games, journaling games, and one-pages, it's possible to have an adventure in just 15 minutes, and that's the goal of this game jam! You, game designer, are challenged to create a paragraph-style game – just like the classic gamebooks – on a single sheet in the pocketmod zine format (8-page zine)!

RULES

1. Your rules and complete adventure must be fully playable on one single sheet.
2. Your game can make use of dice, jenga, playing cards, tarot, whatever you want to use to aid the mechanics of your game.
3. The "pocketmod zine" format is an A4 sheet folded and cut into a mini magazine with 8 pages. You can check out more and download a tutorial on how to make one here: (https://pocketmod.com/howto).
4. You can use/hack classic rules from books like Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, A Choose Your Own... or you can create your own rules, whether they're simple, quick, complicated, or wild!
5. Games can be offered for free or PWYW (Pay What You Want). You can also set a price, but we encourage you to add community copies or simplified versions so more people can access them.
6. If needed, label explicit or graphic content. You can also use or reference safety tools; they can be additional files for download.
7. You can submit multiple games!
8. No generative AI is allowed in your submission or on your submission page. This includes AI-generated art and text.
9. No fascists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, sexists, or other bigots.

RESOURCES 

• PocketMod (8-page zine) - You can download the 8-page zine template here, created by Lin Codega. Jared shared a detailed tutorial on how to create a pocketmod zine. If you have questions, there are lots of tutorials on Pinterest that might help. 
• Gamebooks - You can learn more about gamebooks in the Reddit community. The 3 Minute Board Games channel has this cool video about Fighting Fantasy games that might help you understand how they work. Lloyd of Gamebooks is a great blog about gamebooks for further exploration. You can also use Demian’s Gamebook Web Page to find an amazing list of gamebooks, and of course, browse InternetArchive!

QUESTION?

The jam community is a space for everyone to collaborate. If you have questions, use the community tab, and if you have ideas, are looking for collaborations, or just want to chat, feel free to join in!