A one-person software studio in Maryland.
I build iOS apps here, starting with software for my own three kids — which is the fastest way I know to find out whether something is actually any good.
Nothing is in the App Store yet. Here's what's being built, and how.
In the lab
A typing game for kids who are learning to type properly. Most of what's out there is either a drill that children abandon in a week, or a game that's fun but quietly teaches them to hunt and peck. Key Quest is an attempt at the third thing.
- Adaptive pacing — it watches which keys you're slow on and builds the next lesson around those
- Progression tied to accuracy before speed, because speed built on bad habits has to be unlearned
- Native SwiftUI, works offline, no account required
- Built for a Pre-K, a first grader, and a rising third grader, all at once
A reference app for monster-collecting RPGs, built for the four of us while we're actually playing. Type matchups, evolution requirements, and version availability — without leaving the game to load a website full of advertising.
- Designed around time-to-answer, not engagement — the measure of success is how little time you spend in it
- Version-aware, so the answer is correct for your game rather than an average of all of them
- A "No Surprises" mode that hides what you haven't found yet, because the discovery belongs to the game
- One-handed and offline, for use in the back of a car with a controller in the other hand
An empty cell is still a position. When there's something here, it will be because it shipped — not because it was announced.
How I build
Small, native, and tested on people who will tell me the truth.
I've spent about eight years managing engineering teams, mostly on backend systems, experimentation, and things that have to stay up. Syntax Labs is where I get to build the whole thing instead of a piece of it.
Who
Eddie Hinkle
I manage a backend engineering team by day and write fiction when there's time, which there usually isn't. Syntax Labs is the place where those two habits overlap — the studio is named for the word that means the grammar of a language and the arrangement of a sentence at the same time.
It's a one-person operation in Maryland, run deliberately small. I'd rather ship one thing my children actually use than five things nobody does.