Explore World Table
Watch the journey from Home to a country, a game with the coach and a seat at a table. Follow the walkthrough, then try the prototype yourself.
Project Overview
World Table is a website and app of traditional card games from around the world, built as a journey. Every player has a passport: they visit countries, open them with visas, play each country’s real games, and collect stamps and miles, against the computer or real people, with a chat that translates itself.
Design Challenge
Make 29 games from 17 countries easy to learn and easy to play with strangers in any language, on phone, tablet and desktop, from one codebase. And keep the table fair: the server runs every move, and miles have no cash value.
Every game has a home
The app opens on places. Every country is a short journey through the games people really play there, and finishing it earns a stamp in the passport.
One table, every language
Write in your language and everyone reads it in theirs, with the original one tap away. A local coach teaches each game with a guided lesson and hints, and if a player drops, the seat is held so nobody loses the game.
Designed like a journey
World Table is about travel, so its visual language comes from the things you carry on a trip: a passport, a boarding pass, a departures board and a visa stamp. Each one shaped a part of the product.
Where the language comes from
Navy cloth, gold foil. The app is the cover: deep navy surfaces, with gold kept for what is pressed or earned.
Small caps over big values. One field pattern runs through the passport card, the welcome pass and the visa sheet.
Condensed, evenly spaced. The board gave the wordmark its narrow letters and the country list its rhythm.
Ink, rings, a slight tilt. Progress is a stamp you collect, the one place where the brand feels made by hand.
- Classic suits and clear corners
- Real rules and local game names
- Partners, tricks and trumps
- The pace of a game at home
- Navy cover and gold foil
- Tickets, gates, seats and stamps
- Calm surfaces, one gold action
- Cards inside a world of places
The logo
- 01
The O is the world
A globe stands in for the O, so the name and the symbol read as one shape.
- 02
A spade in the globe
The spade is cut into the globe, so the cards sit inside the world itself.
- 03
Departure-board letters
Narrow capitals from the board stay clear in phone headers and ads.
- 04
Passport gold
The passport’s gold in one flat tone keeps the mark crisp at every size.
The language in the product
Navy cover, gold stamps
Deep navy for surfaces, gold only for actions and small accents, ivory for text. Rubik covers Latin, Hebrew and Cyrillic, and every component is bound to tokens.
- 01
One gold action
Gold marks the main action, so every screen shows one clear next step.
- 02
Words stay live
Text stays live, so every screen works in all 16 languages.
- 03
A calm table
The centre of the table stays quiet and open, so the cards always read first.
- 04
Easy to tap, easy to read
Touch targets stay at 48 px or more, and every suit has its own shape.
Free to play, honest to pay
New players get 3 days with every country open. After that their first country stays open, and every other country opens with a visa paid in miles, earned by playing. Prices and balances are always on screen, and report or block is one tap away.
Figma first, then two AI agents
The prototype and design system came first. The app was then synced to it, and the code was written by Claude and ChatGPT working in parallel, following my direction and decisions.
Shared rules for both agents
- Keep the full product in every change.
- Build only what was asked for.
- Money, ads and going live need my approval.
- Secret keys stay out of the code.
- Game engines are protected, and every fix is logged with a test case.
Health check · 3 Nov 2026
- 392 unit tests passed.
- 125 database rule tests passed.
- All 29 games fit the screen at 4 sizes: 174 of 174.
- 5 online tables at once for every game, 145 in all: 29 of 29.
- Full online games in real browsers: 28 of 29. The one failure was in the test bot, not the app.
- Browser tests: 16 failures. 14 were outdated tests, and 2 were real bugs in notifications, now being fixed.
A launch kit in the same language
The landing page answers the first question in one screen: what is this, and can I play now? The social ads carry the same travel story, each built around one photo and one line.
Scroll inside either image to see the full page
- 01
One action
Every button says Play free in your browser: one clear next step.
- 02
Languages up front
The 16 languages sit under the hero, since the chat leads the story.
- 03
Access as a ticket
Like a boarding pass: one country stays open, visas open the rest.
- 04
Thumb-first on mobile
A light header and a sticky bar keep the main action within reach of the thumb.
Social ads · feed 4:5
Stories · 9:16
Safe zones
In stories the top 14% and bottom 35% stay clear of the platform’s own buttons.
Copy above, subject below
Copy sits above the photo’s main subject, so the place itself always stays in full view.
Button next to the text
On feed ads the button sits right under the copy, where the eye lands after reading.
Real numbers
Every claim comes straight from the product: 17 countries, 29 games and 16 languages.
Animated stories · 9:16
The app opens the story
Each film opens on a phone with the real screen, then zooms in, so the product comes first.
One idea per film
One film tours five countries and their games, the other a table chatting in eight languages.
The same close
Logo, real numbers and one button, set on the Delft card-back pattern at 10%.
Built, not launched yet.
World Table is built and tested but not live. The worldtable.app domain is bought, the database and email accounts are being connected, and payments are not approved yet. The brand, landing page and social ads are ready for launch day. Next: table photos for 15 countries, a launch date for the weekly tournament, and the app stores.
