Why I built it
Before creating my current portfolio, I wanted to see whether a personal website could feel more like a game than a conventional collection of pages. The result was Marina Bay Rush, a browser-based racing experience inspired by Singapore’s night-race atmosphere.
Instead of immediately scrolling through my work, visitors arrived at a circuit where they could choose between race and practice modes, drive against a ghost, and chase a faster lap time. The lap timer, sector feedback, speed display, and circuit map turned the portfolio into something visitors could play.
What worked
The project had personality. It connected the website to Singapore, made the first interaction memorable, and gave me room to experiment with game mechanics and an interface built around speed.
It also represented the kind of work I enjoy: taking a familiar format and asking whether it could behave differently.
What the feedback taught me
The same idea that made the website distinctive also made it less effective as a portfolio.
Most visitors were not arriving to learn a new control scheme or complete an experience. They wanted to understand who I was, what I had worked on, and where to find the relevant information. Putting a game in front of that information created friction, especially for someone visiting quickly.
The lesson was not that playful interfaces are bad. It was that creativity should support a product’s purpose rather than compete with it. A portfolio can still have a strong visual identity while making its content immediately understandable.
Deprecating the live version
I am retiring the live version of Marina Bay Rush because the kohtzerui.com domain will become the home of my current portfolio. This project will remain available through its GitHub repository as an archived experiment.
I did not document every stage of the original build, so this is intentionally a retrospective rather than a detailed development log. What matters most is the change in direction it produced: from designing a portfolio around an interaction to designing one around the information a visitor needs.
What I am keeping
The new portfolio is more traditional, but Marina Bay Rush still influences it. I want to retain the ambition, personality, and willingness to experiment—while making the experience clearer, faster to navigate, and more useful.
The racing portfolio is therefore not something I consider wasted work. It was a deliberately unusual experiment that helped me understand when novelty adds value and when it becomes an obstacle.