"Even though my last name says otherwise, there is only one of me. But I do have a split personality."
Half of his week goes to a martial arts gym. The other half goes to building software and teaching people to build with it. TEWGO happened in between the two, on his own time and his own dime.
The two halves
The ninja
Martial arts is the older half and the one most people know him for. Decades of teaching it, a gym on Samui that runs on real mats with real people, and the splits, still, on the side of a cliff.
That half shows up in this game more than you would think. Eight worlds, and the one he built first after Space was Feudal Japan.
The digital dojo
The newer half. Building software, teaching people to build with it, and turning what he learns into things other people can pick up and use.
Same instinct as the gym, different mat. Learn the move, drill the move, keep only what actually works.
Both halves live at ricktew.com.
Why TEWGO exists
He loves chess and does not have an evening to give it. TEWGO is the game he wanted instead: the same shape of thinking, playable in the time it takes to wait in a queue.
It is free and it stays free. Everything in it, all eight worlds and every figure, board, background and soundtrack, is earned by playing. There is one optional purchase that skips the earning and it is cosmetic. It cannot touch the board, the rules, the difficulty or your odds, and that is a promise written into the terms, not a marketing line.
There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. The privacy policy is short because there is very little to describe.
The name
TEW is two, the pair you capture. GO is five in Japanese, the row you need. And Tew is his surname, which made naming it easy.
That is also why a purchase shows up on your card statement as TEWS INC. Tews Inc is his company, and the same one sits behind his other games and sites.
Other things he is building
Dungeon Hole
A one against one browser strategy game. One player builds the dungeon, the other sends a party through it, and both watch the same replay. dungeonhole.com
AstroHold
A game with a home of its own at astrohold.com.
Arena RPG Coming
A board game with fantasy dungeon and dragon vibes that he designed as a teenager and is bringing back. Soon TEW be released.
They are all in beta while he finishes them, which is the honest version.
Building something yourself?
The digital half of the split is a job, not just a hobby. Rick builds and ships real things: games, booking systems, shops, sites and the automation behind them. For business owners he builds what he calls a Digital Dojo, a small trained AI workforce that does the repeated admin, under one rule that never bends: a human presses every send.
TEWGO is the toy version of that. Everything on this site, the game, the engine, the store and the pages you are reading, is his own work. If you have a project of your own and want it built, or want to get unstuck, that is exactly the other half of his week.
Read the whole story at ricktew.com/aininja, or just send a message here and say what you are working on.
Say hello
Bug reports, ideas, or just why you love the game: it all goes to the same place and he reads it himself. Send a message.