Phenry Ewing

...an example of AI used to augment, not replace, creative labor.

The news cycle moves at breakneck speed. Constructing a solvable, coherent, and delightful daily puzzle takes effort, much spent in trial-and-error mode.

I hope these tools will be bicycle-y (in the Jobsian sense) for puzzle-makers

I also built a full editorial UI for a professional (HUMAN!... I hasten to add 😅) Crossword Editor to review, curate and edit the puzzles by hand— or to set custom story inputs and generate more puzzles at scale. It was a *very* tough and fascinating problem to tackle, and IMO serves as... (2/3)

This was an incredibly fun project to work on— especially the opportunity to collaborate with the brilliant engineering/design teams at @particle.news

I built the service which takes breaking news stories, finds a theme, and generates high quality crossword grids & clues on that topic... (1/3)

Does Super Mario Bros. (1985) Have Rules? Yes! No? Maybe? Why do you care? Why does it matter?

i wrote an article about that stupid little question i asked a couple weeks ago, why i asked it, and how the answer to the question can be tremendously beneficial for ttrpg designers
possumcreek.medium.com/does-super-m...

Equestria makes a lot more sense to me than our universe atm, I tell ya whut

Designing Educational TTRPGs for Children Learn how to design and run your own educational tabletop RPG campaigns for elementary school students.

Tag me if / when you share anything about sessions you’ve played with him! Always keen to learn / get new ideas :)

Also FYI, in a fit of pique I signed up for this course in January… could be up your alley as well! www.d6learning.com/course/desig...

But there's so much divergence from there. Just like adults, some kids design a character like themselves, some design their opposites. Our extremely shy friend Essie, who always clings to Mom and seldom speaks, picked "Overconfident" as her Quirk 🫠🥹

The character creation is just such a special moment for a kid this age— there's this "virtue/values" alignment system called Elements of Harmony. You pick one from Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Loyalty, or Magic and... the kids know IMMEDIATELY what theirs is. My son chose Kindness 😍

I picked this My Little Pony gamebook on a whim at our local library, and the rules + setting are *perfectly* designed for younger kids. Despite the fact that IANAB (I am not a Brony 😅— none of us had ever seen the show) it was so easy to learn & run. The kids fell in headfirst.

I ran a TTRPG session for three almost-5-year-olds, on a whim- we had a blast. I honestly can’t believe how well they did- they held their dice (and attention) for over an hour. Roleplaying is magic 🥹

Looks like next year may be the one where Godot overtakes Unity in the game jam scene! You love to see it

These guys are worse, in terms of sheer spam volume and disregard for data privacy, than any other category of spam/scam texts I get. Finally started reporting them as spam and I don’t feel bad about it at all

Time Flies is OUT NOW!!

For Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Mac/PC. On sale for a limited time. Hand-crafted, delightful, short and sweet. And most of all: fun. timeflies.buzz 🪰

Spread the word!

News - Newly Deciphered Cuneiform Tablet Contains Unknown Sumerian Myth - Archaeology Magazine CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—A riveting lost Sumerian myth was recently rediscovered thanks to University of Chicago Sumerologist […]

New Sumerian myth just dropped

we may have lost kevin macleod (context in case your day hasn't been ruined: bsky.app/profile/chri... ) but Tom Lehrer was on our side until the end

Cmon bro it's foretold

Listening to Warm Focus by @hoverbird.bsky.social today and reading thingswemake.com/lettervoxd/

I've been exploring subtitles for movies and TV, and just as I read the part about this bulk subtitle database (opus.nlpl.eu/OpenSubtitle...) this song came on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmo3...

🤩

which is short for “god’s wounds!” iykyk

more and more elements of the games industry are going to align themselves with gambling in the coming years, in a normalization of market failure. it is crucial to build a new paradigm for games and it must be ideologically opposed to this one. restructuring around gambling is anti-culture.

N

An act of war weeks in planning but unauthorized by Congress against a country that Trump's own director of intelligence testified under oath was not close to getting a nuclear weapon.

Once more with feeling

Witches' Quarrel: a quick 2-player legacy game Best friends discover new magic in each 20 minute deckbuilding duel

Been playtesting Witches’ Quarrel for ages, and it’s such a polished gem at this point…. excited to see it finally launch on Kickstarter! Def back it if you love fast-paced PvP card games, strong character-driven narrative design, and progressively unfolding legacy mechanics.

Witches' Quarrel: a quick 2-player legacy game Best friends discover new magic in each 20 minute deckbuilding duel

Been playtesting Witches’ Quarrel for ages, and it’s such a polished gem at this point…. excited to see it finally launch on Kickstarter! Def back it if you love fast-paced PvP card games, strong character-driven narrative design, and progressively unfolding legacy mechanics.

I wish I could say I've EVER worked at a studio where this didn't happen. So many times across my career, when asked for 9 months, we'd be given 3 months, then another 3 when we needed more time, and finally 3 more when what we ended up with wasn't as good as the 9 month version could have been.

The flood of encomiums and morality tales about Elon's turn in Washington cldn't be more predictable, vapid & sickening. If you want a story, get me the story about the crisis comms team directing this. He ran anti-constitutional blitzkrieg thru the federal government, did massive harm, violated ...

Make 2025 3030 again

Damn Lost Cities is such a perfect game. It would be an honor to have my shit absolutely destroyed by Rob’s brother

This is why you don't see Donkey Kong Jr. anymore

DONKEY KONG JR.
NINTENDO 1986
NES

X post by OpenAI ceo Sam Altman responding to Elon Musk's Grok randomly bringing up white genocide: "There are many ways this could have happened. I’m sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon. But this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa. As an AI programmed to be maximally truth seeking and follow my instr…"

rarely does one gotta hand it to sam altman but this is a solid troll