{
  "id": 13935807,
  "title": "I read 321 Touch Grass entries. None of them could referee a game of Simon Says. So I built one that can.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/12/i-read-321-touch-grass-entries-none-of-them-could-referee-a-game-of",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-12T10:50:14.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/nicebills/i-read-321-touch-grass-entries-none-of-them-could-referee-a-game-of-simon-says-so-i-built-one-4if7"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The author of this submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1 sought to create a group version of the game Simon Says that could referee the game live, keeping everyone engaged without the distraction of checking phones. After reviewing 321 Week 1 entries and 130 of them being outdoor quests or games, the author found no solution that provided live monitoring of a group playing together.\n\nThe built game, named Simon Sees, functions like Simon Says outdoors, with a phone propped up on a stump or backpack, tracking the players. The game starts with everyone lining up and the phone displaying a numbered photo card for each participant, which can be named verbally or typed. After a brief pause, the phone announces a command, such as \"Simon says stand on one foot.\" Participants then perform the action while the phone streams a few frames per second to a laptop.\n\nThe phone employs a Qwen3.5-4B I fine-tuned for the specific task of determining if a person is following the command, or Liquid's d1 decision model if the hardware constraints prevent the use of the larger model. The referee assesses each player's cropped image, answering a yes/no question about whether the individual is executing the command correctly. The game concludes when only one player remains standing.\n\nThe game is designed for any user with a phone, laptop, and some space – be it a family at a picnic, children at a birthday party, or a group at the park who have exhausted their activities. The demo video showcases a replay with AI-generated sample photos, running on a 2-vCPU, no-GPU setup, and is sped up three times to fit the demonstration within a minute. The real models, running on a similar hardware configuration, are described as providing accurate results.",
  "summary": "This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass Playground games rarely end because people get bored. They end when one person checks a phone, then another, and the circle on the grass turns into a row of people looking down. I wanted to give the phone the one job in Simon Says that nobody wants, the referee, so everyone else can stay in the game. Before…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}