We just shipped the first full new-player tutorial for Stellarch, and it is live for every alpha pilot right now. Before we call it done, we want you to try to break it.
Here is the ask, up front: play through it, then tell us exactly where a brand-new pilot would still be confused. What did not make sense. What we forgot to explain. Where you would have quit if this were your first ten minutes. That feedback is the whole reason for this post.
Why a tutorial at all
Stellarch is deterministic. Draft a 7-card team, battle, and the seeded engine resolves the whole match the same way every time. That is a strength once you understand it, and a wall before you do. A new pilot opening the game to eight affinities, a wall of Fighters, abilities and rulesets has no idea what matters yet.
So we built a guided first session. It does not lecture. It puts real battles on screen and pauses them at the exact moment a mechanic matters, points at the Fighter doing the thing, and explains it in one line. Then it hands you the controls. If you want to see the wall it is walking you through, the full Fighter roster is public.
It opens with a roll call
The first thing a new pilot sees is the Fighter Roll Call: a short welcome that introduces the idea of a team before you are asked to build one. It plays once, then routes you into the curriculum. You can skip it from the first frame if you already know the ropes.
From there you land on the Briefing, the tutorial hub. Seven stages, opened in order, each teaching one idea. Your progress is tracked, and the reward rail at the side shows what finishing the whole thing earns you.
Three kinds of stage
Not every lesson is a fight, and that is deliberate. The curriculum mixes three shapes.
Briefing stages teach without a battle. The opener walks you through what a Fighter is and how the eight affinities relate, with no combat to distract from the vocabulary.
Coached battles are the heart of it. A real match plays out, and a coach overlay pauses it at authored beats. It freezes the frame, frames the Fighter that matters, and tells you what just happened and why, then resumes. Speed and targeting share a stage, then a specific ability and a ruleset twist each get their own moment.
The coach never traps you. Skip is there the whole time, and the match keeps playing whether you read every beat or not. If you step through the fight yourself, that counts as watching it.
The build stage flips it around. Instead of watching, you assemble your own team on the real ranked picker, with the coach nudging you through commander choice, which locks your affinity, and the mana budget. It is the same picker you will use in ranked, so the muscle memory transfers directly.
Every pilot sees the same fight
Because the engine is seeded, a coached stage shows the identical replay to everyone. When we teach a mechanic on a battle, that battle is a fixed thing we can point at with confidence, not a random roll that might not show the lesson. You and every other pilot are looking at the same board, the same swing, the same result. It is also how we keep the whole tutorial honest: the fights are real matches, not scripted cutscenes.
Finish it and you keep something
Complete the full curriculum and you earn two things nobody can buy: the Academy Graduate title and the Academy Vanguard avatar. Both are grant-only and bound to your account, so wearing them means you actually went through the airlock the hard way. Then the last screen hands you straight to ranked.
This is where you come in
The tutorial works. What we do not know is whether it teaches. That is a different question, and only new eyes answer it.
So play it, and tell us:
- Which stage lost you, if any.
- A mechanic the coach mentioned but did not actually make clear.
- Something a real beginner still would not understand after finishing.
- A moment the pacing dragged, or moved too fast.
- Anything that is flat-out missing.
Be blunt. A tutorial that a veteran finds fine and a newcomer finds baffling is a failed tutorial, and we would rather hear it now. Drop your notes in Discord and we will read every one.
Join the Discord and tell us where it loses you → https://discord.gg/K3geA9hD28
Recruiting just got real
One more thing: if you are already an alpha pilot, there is now a reason to bring people in beyond goodwill. We turned on the referral program, and it pays.
Every pilot you recruit earns you 5% of everything they spend, forever, paid as KRED store credit. It binds from the first click of your link, so someone who buys before they even sign up still counts for you. It is deliberately not instant: shares age through a holdback, and anything funded by a purchase that later reverses is clawed back. The full referral rules lay out the holdback, the per-recruit cap, and the review step. KRED is in-store credit, not a payout to your bank, and we would rather say that plainly than dress it up.
On top of that, there is a live monthly rally: a referral leaderboard where confirmed signups score points, the top ranks split a reward bundle, and first place takes home an exclusive promo Fighter. Your share link, code, and standing all live on your Recruit page. We wrote the whole thing up separately if you want the full mechanics.
Enlist
Stellarch is in closed alpha, and it is a soft one: no invite, no waiting on a list. Sign up and play right now. To finish setup you connect an email and a Hive account, and if you do not have a Hive account the game creates one for you in a couple of clicks. Then you are in, and the tutorial above is your first stop.
Sign up and play now → https://stellarch.io/en
Rather follow the build from the outside first? Back our Product Hunt Coming Soon page so you are notified on launch day, hang out in the Discord, and follow @stellarch_tcg on X for the running feed.
Enlist & stay in the loop
- Sign up and play now → https://stellarch.io/en
- Follow
@stellarch on Hive → @stellarch
- Join the Discord → https://discord.gg/K3geA9hD28
- Follow
Latest dispatches from Stellarch
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Latest updates from Stellarch
Stellarch is a deterministic trading-card game on Hive: draft a 7-card team, outplay your opponent, climb the ranked ladder. Browse the cards · Read the docs · See the leaderboard