This is a submission for the New Year, New You Portfolio Challenge Presented by Google AI

About Me

I’m Svetlina, a lifelong curious engineer and AI enthusiast. My portfolio reflects my journey as a problem-solver, builder, and global thinker — from my early days studying mathematics and computer science, through building software for financial institutions, to exploring AI safety and adversarial prompt engineering.

Rather than a traditional static portfolio, I wanted to turn my professional journey into a game, where each achievement, skill, and milestone is an interactive experience. This gamified approach reflects both my love for technology and my playful approach to storytelling.

Portfolio

I’ve deployed my portfolio as an interactive, scrollable game world. You navigate through five distinct “worlds”, each representing a stage of my career and personal development. Milestones appear as collectible nodes, with hover and click animations that reveal achievements, certifications, and skills.

You can explore it live here: IMPORTANT: Use PC as navigation is via keyboard

How I Built It

This project blends React, Framer Motion, and TailwindCSS for a smooth, animated, interactive UI. Key elements include:

Gamified Timeline: Each “world” represents a phase of my career. Milestones are clickable and reveal details dynamically.

Animated Character: A fully animated avatar moves through the world, responding to keyboard controls.

Responsive Design: Built to scale from mobile to desktop with flexible layouts.

Fallbacks and Accessibility: Images gracefully degrade with online fallbacks for reliability.

Tech Stack: React, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, Framer Motion, Lucide-React icons.

Google AI Integration: I leveraged AI-assisted prompt generation to implement the application in very little time. This approach allowed me to combine storytelling, interactivity, and technical skill into a single immersive portfolio experience.

What I’m Most Proud Of

Gamification of a portfolio: Turning a traditional resume into an interactive adventure is both creative and technically challenging.

Animated and responsive design: Smooth character animation, world transitions, and dynamic milestone reveals.

AI-enhanced storytelling: Using AI tools to generate milestone content and skills descriptions allowed me to focus on design while ensuring clarity and engagement.

Technical achievements: Handling large scrollable “worlds”, dynamic animations, and interactive state management in React while keeping performance smooth.

Immersive experience: Every element — color-coded worlds, glowing achievements, skill bars — is designed to make exploration fun and informative.

I’m excited to share a portfolio that demonstrates both my technical abilities and my creative approach to showcasing them.