Getting started · 3 min read
Make a world you can walk into from one sentence
World Mode turns one sentence into a world with a drawn cast and places painted as you arrive. How to write the sentence, play, and share.
Most AI story tools hand you a chat box. World Mode in Pominis hands you a place. You write one sentence about a world and who you are in it, and about 30 seconds later you are standing inside it: a picture of where you are, the people who are there, and a box to say or do anything.
The example in this guide is real. We typed: “I'm the new mail carrier in a small seaside town where every letter is addressed to someone who's gone.” Pominis called the world The Undelivered, wrote its rules, brought in three people (Marla Quist, who runs the mail depot; Tom Bridger; and Nell Ashcombe, a girl in an oversized yellow raincoat) and opened at Cormorant Quay, in a depot that smells of coal smoke and salt.
Write the sentence
A good world sentence answers three questions: where you are, who you are, and what is strange there. You do not need names, rules, or a plot; the world fills those in. Leave room for surprises.
- Where: a lighthouse town, a night market that appears only in the rain, a generation ship, a school that opens at midnight.
- Who: the new postman, the last noodle seller, the ship's only doctor, the student who stayed too late.
- What's strange: every letter is for someone who's gone; a customer pays with a letter from your late father; the ship's map has a deck nobody has seen.
Start from the homepage: switch the box to Enter a world, type the sentence, and press Enter world. You can write in English or Chinese; the world answers in the language you use.
Meet the cast while it is built
While the world is written, you meet its people first: they step forward one by one under “Who you will meet”, so the wait shows you who is in the story. Each keeps the same face from then on, which is why Marla looks the same behind the counter as she did on the title screen.
Talk, act, and go somewhere new
Type anything: a question, a gesture, a plan. Or tap one of the three suggestions. Characters answer in their own voice and the scene moves on, one line at a time; click or press Space to read on.
Head somewhere new and the world opens up as you arrive. The stage stays on the old place while you are still on your way, and changes at the line where you get there. In our mail carrier's world, the first letter was for Tobias Renn, 4 Nettle Row; walking down there brought us to a flooded street with the door numbered 4, and Nell waiting at the water's edge.
The world remembers
Each world keeps a short memory of relationships, promises, things you carry and what you are after. Later turns build on it, so a promise made at the lighthouse can come back at the pier. Leave for a day and a character may write to you about where things stand; the world waits where you left it.
Share it, or write it into a story
- Publish: from the world menu choose Publish this world, or use Publish world in the Studio. Anyone who opens it walks straight in, from the beginning, in their own session.
- Write it into a story: in the Studio, Write as story turns the world's cast and places into a full first chapter with scenes and choices you can keep editing.
- Play other worlds: many published stories offer World Mode too, so you can step into their world and go wherever you like.
Starting a world is free and every world comes with free turns; after those, a turn costs one credit.
