Artefact Game UI Design

Portfolio project

Intro

Artefact is a collaborative worldbuilding experience from Neal Stephenson and Wētā Workshop, developed on Lamina1. It invites players to step into the aftermath of the Spike — a fizzled singularity that tore the internet apart, ended the reign of AI megasystems, and forced humanity to rebuild through new, decentralized systems.

Story

After the Spike, remnants of humanity scavenge what remained of their digital past. In the rubble of abandoned networks and ruined servers, they discover Artefacts — evolving digital entities capable of storing and transmitting lost knowledge.

Gameplay

Find a Thumb Drive. Boot up your Rig — a salvaged machine stitched together from CPUs, drives, and scraps of machine code. Decrypt Artefacts, and build trust within your Phyle.

You begin as a scavenger — one of the few humans left navigating the ruins of the old world. Your entry point is a thumb drive, a mysterious device you mint and decrypt to access hidden transmissions, testimonies, and artefacts left behind by the Phyles.

More: https://lamina1.com/space/artefact/about

Game UI

Game runs in browser, and it is a mix of three.js and Rive

Art Direction

A rebirth of digital design after the collapse - where the interface is not ornamental, but devotional.

Artefact’s UI embodies the new humanism that rises from the ruins of machine excess.

This UI bridges two traditions:

The measured harmony of Renaissance Humanism and the stark functionality of early computing.

It feels crafted, mathematical, and devotional, yet written in a console.

Like a monk’s manuscript translated into pixels: precise, restrained, and reverent.

Rive UI

Entire UI user gets to interact with has been built with Rive. All connected through data-binding to reuse everything across the game. A CLI styled UI full of ASCII ornaments mimicking the beautiful of renaissance books