How to play Chain Poem

Chain Poem is the folded-paper poem, the surrealists' exquisite corpse: everyone adds a line to a poem without seeing what came before, and the poem is read out whole at the end, to everyone's surprise. Here it's played in the browser over a link: the game passes the poems round, keeps the time and folds the paper for you.

How a game goes

1. As the game starts, every player takes a seat round the table, and every seat starts a poem from a word the game draws: sea, suitcase, lantern. Use it anywhere in your first line, or only as a spark.
2. Every round, the poems move one seat on: you get your neighbour's poem, and yours goes to the next player. There are as many rounds as every poem has lines: 4, 6, 8 or 12, as chosen when the game was opened. With fewer players than lines, a poem comes back to you.
3. The paper is folded: of the poem in your hands you see only the last word of the line before. Add one line to it in 30, 60 or 90 seconds. As you type, the game shows you the one word the next poet will see: your own last word.
4. Your line saves itself as you type; press Done when you have finished, and the round ends early once everyone is done. A line left blank hands nothing on, and the next poet goes on from the poem's own first word.

Reading the poems

Once every line is written, the poems are read together, one at a time. A poem's lines come in one after another, on every screen at the same moment, each with its poet; Show all opens the rest at once on your own screen. In every line the last word, the one the next poet saw, is marked, and the word of the next line that took it up is underlined: you can follow the chain link by link. Press Ready once you've read the poem, and the next one opens when everyone is ready, or when its time runs out.

Peaceful or competitive

The peaceful mode keeps no score. Give a heart to the lines you love, and a reaction if you wish (😂 made me laugh, 🥹 moved me, 🔥 on fire, 🤯 blew my mind). At the end the line with the most hearts becomes the Line of the Night, and everyone gets at least one badge.

The competitive mode keeps a score: in every poem, vote for the best line that isn't yours. You can move your vote until you're ready, and every vote you get is worth 10 points. The standings show above every poem from the second on, and the podium at the end.

Badges

At the end, badges go to the table's habits: The Laugh for the most 😂 over all one's lines, The Heartstring for the most 🥹, The Spark for the most 🔥, The Surprise for the most 🤯, Bridge Builder for the most lines that took up the word they were handed, and Quick Pen for the first to press Done in the most rounds. In the peaceful mode the Line of the Night has a badge too, and a player still without one gets the Good Sport. On a tie, a badge goes to whoever joined first.

After the last poem

The final page keeps every poem of the game: read one aloud, or share it as an image. Mix makes a brand new poem from the game's lines each time you press it, each line from the same place of another poem, for one more surprise before the rematch.

How it differs from pen and paper

On paper, everyone writes a line, folds the paper so that only the last word shows, and passes it on, and someone unfolds it and reads it out at the end. Here the game folds the paper, passes the poems, keeps the time and marks the links, so a whole table can play from their phones, even miles apart. The reading aloud is still the table's.