Foldpass Review

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry with many different iterations and nuances, but the format the West is most familiar with is a three-line verse with a five - seven - five syllable count.

I’ve always been a writer, but I suck at writing poetry. Whenever I was instructed to put together a poem, I’d go the “easy” route by banging out a haiku. Sometimes the teacher was impressed. Often they weren’t.

See, writing haiku is not actually easy. You have to express yourself and paint a visual with a very limited sentence structure. Once you harness the joy of minimalistic creation, you can put together some neat stuff.

Which is why Foldpass by Galaxy & Sons is a pretty cool app. It lets you create haiku by passing a session between friends - or strangers. You wind up with some pretty funny and insightful words. There’s just one major issue: The writers don’t have to adhere to haiku’s strict syllable counts. Which begs the question: What the heck?

Otherwise, Foldpass is very straightforward. Each game starts with a blank sheet of paper broken up into three sections. You can enter text into one or more of the sections, adhering to proper haiku format as you go (or not, since you’re a feared rebel in poetry circles across the country).

If you leave any of the sections blank, you can tap on them to bring up the option to recruit other players. You can find friends via email or Facebook, and you can also pick up a random stranger. They fill in the blanks you leave behind, and with any luck, you’ll have a complete haiku at the end of it all.

Of course you can get some pretty interesting verses going. You can also buy digital stationary and share your words of genius over social media.

Ultimately, your enjoyment of Foldpass comes down to how long you want to exchange silly or inspiration words with your pals as well as strangers. Foldpass could benefit from a community that lets people view finished verses, but in its current form it’s a good way to kick around some nature metaphors for a few hours.