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Kai Detmers
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Creative product lab · webDeveloped prototype

Masterpiece Collector— museum collection meets booster pack.

A collecting game built from real artworks: open epoch packs, reveal curated works with rarity and holographic treatments, then build a visual album across art history. The design challenge is deliberately strange — use game reward language without cheapening the artwork itself.

How it evolved

Reconstructed from a compact but unusually detailed February 2026 commit sequence.

01
Build the game loop and data model together.

The initial sprint already joined six epochs, rarity, weighted pack slots, museum API ingestion, collection progress and ornamental cards. This avoided a common prototype trap where the animation exists before the collection system does.

02
Make opening tactile, not just random.

Swipe reveal, wax-seal/pack details, spotlight and zoom interactions turned a generated list into a ritual. The animation creates anticipation while the artwork remains the visual payoff.

03
Treat holographic effects as art direction.

Pointer-tracked holo profiles and generated masks evolved per epoch instead of applying one rainbow shader everywhere. Medieval/gilded and modern/prismatic treatments can feel different while still belonging to one system.

04
Redesign the shell around the art.

The UI moved to a warmer parchment / Art Nouveau palette and simpler navigation. The key improvement was subtractive: reduce interface color so museum imagery and rarity treatments carry the screen.

05
Curate the dataset as product work.

Duplicates were removed, rarity classifications changed, covers and epoch ordering were refined, and IIIF sources improved. Collection design is data curation as much as frontend engineering.

06
Add limited editions without breaking probability rules.

Curated small pools required modified slot logic, which is a useful reminder that content events often force deeper changes than their visual “special pack” presentation suggests.

UI / art-direction rationale

The artwork is always largestFrames, rarity and holo effects create collectible identity, but the image itself stays dominant. The UI should never make a museum object look like background texture for game chrome.
Pack opening is a ritualWax-seal, swipe and spotlight interactions intentionally slow the reveal. Collection games need anticipation; instant grids are efficient but emotionally flat.
Epochs are visual worldsPalette, cover art and holo profile vary by period so Renaissance, Rococo and Modern packs feel distinct before the first card is read.
Rarity is not artistic valueGame rarity is a collection mechanic based on curation and pack balance, not a claim that one work is objectively “better art”. The UI separates rarity spectacle from factual museum metadata.
Album after dopamineThe opening sequence earns attention, but the durable surface is the collection album: epoch filtering, missing works and progress turn short reward loops into long-term exploration.

System shape

Curate→Museum APIs and build-time scripts normalize artwork, dates, regions and imagery.
Classify→Epoch and rarity metadata define weighted pack pools and limited-edition sets.
Generate→Pack generator applies slot distributions and special pool rules.
Render→SmartImage preloading, ornamental card frames and epoch-specific holo profiles create the collectible surface.
Collect→Album/progress state turns one pack opening into a persistent collection loop.

Visual evidence

The repository contains the real art-direction code, museum image pipeline and generated holo-mask system, but I did not find a clean standalone product screenshot artifact during this pass. I keep the case focused on the actual interaction and visual-system decisions rather than fabricating a card mock for the portfolio.

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