Singularité

I have always been interested by storytelling, and collaborative writing has been a consistent interest in my creative journey. Singularité is a project set in a unique, dark-dystopian universe for which I designed the entire lore, world-building, and core gameplay mechanics from scratch.

This project was a deep dive into narrative design and systems balancing. My challenge was to make sure the world wasn't just 'cool' on paper, but actually playable and welcoming for a community. I had to think like a designer: how do I guide a new player through 50 pages of lore without losing them? By focusing on community engagement and information architecture, I created a structured, user-friendly experience where players can easily find their place and start creating their character and writing their stories.

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In narrative-heavy projects, the biggest friction point is the cognitive load. My research focused on how players absorb complex information, leading me to treat the world-building as a functional product rather than just a story. The challenge was to reduce the bounce rate of new members intimidated by the scale of the universe.

To solve this, I designed an information architecture based on progressive disclosure. I structured the guidebook via Docusaurus as a toolset players can rely on:

• By cross-referencing factions, locations, and mechanics, I allowed for a non-linear exploration. This ensures that the narrative design stays accessible, allowing players to jump easily between different parts of the guidebook.
• After the guidebook was released, pages were added to add new mechanics not previously necessary. The result is a clear user loop (read, understand, play) where the documentation acts as a bridge to active participation rather than a barrier to entry.

This project taught me a fundamental lesson: in a digital community, narrative is an interface. If the story is hard to navigate, the user simply cannot play. By bridging the gap between creative world-building and functional UX, I realized that well-structured documentation is just as vital as the story itself for a world to actually come to life.

The most rewarding part was seeing the system in action. The user-centric onboarding I built allowed a community to grow from zero to 40 active members, who together produced over 2000 written posts.