Most lessons about complex systems are diagrams. You see arrows between boxes; you nod; you forget. This project flips the angle: you don't observe the system — you become a unit of it.
Episode 1 makes you a single payment moving through Adyen's seven-stop processing cycle. You feel why approvals fail, why fees stack quietly, and what the system remembers about you between runs. Episode 2 is locked as ASML. Future episodes will make you a chip, a wind-turbine bid, a freight container — each one a 15-minute first-person tour of a system most people only ever see from the outside.
Every design decision is checked against these four. They are the arbiters, not preferences.
The screen is a stage for three voices that argue with each other. The argument is the curriculum: the player learns the shape of the system from the tension between them.
The Narrator is anthropological. The System speaks to the Intent. Schema is precise and cold. Pulse is the human heart that worries about the buyer. Toll is older than everything and resents it. Shadow accumulates across runs — born only when the player's Ledger has earned enough trust to make the system recognise them.
Each biome teaches one thing — one principle of how the system actually works. Together they are the cycle the payment travels.
Vanilla HTML, CSS, JavaScript — no framework, no bundler, no
build step. ES modules via <script type="module">
is the loading pattern. Serve any folder over HTTP and the
game runs. The constraint is the design: depth comes from prose
and pacing, not framework features.
Three voices implemented as separate DOM containers with distinct typography. Voice queue serialises audio playback so the same TTS-cloned actor never talks over themselves. Ledger + scenarios + audio + accessibility (focus-visible, reduced-motion, keyboard nav) all wired without external libraries.
Aesthetic touchstones: Disco Elysium (text as mechanic), Mirror's Edge (geometric minimalism), Kentucky Route Zero (theatrical pacing), Inside (confident silence).
Senior Learning Experience designer, just interested in L&D and European tech. This project is a portfolio piece + a public demonstration of two published frameworks: the Four Agency Types and the Five Economy Principles. The goal is learning experiences that take complex systems seriously and make them felt.
Episode 2 is locked as ASML. The format is portable: any system with a clear cycle and a load-bearing protagonist-as-unit metaphor (a chip, a freight container, a wind-turbine bid) can become a 15-minute first-person tour.