Improving FTUE & Player Retention Through Data-Driven Design

Lucky Clash combines grid-based creature combat, strategic team composition, collection, and asynchronous PvP. In an earlier version, the first-time experience consisted of five separate introductory stages, each followed by a victory screen and a loading transition back to the main menu.

The intended purpose of these stages was to teach the fundamentals before players entered the main competitive loop. For our vertical-slice tests, we defined completion as reaching and playing the first PvP match—not finishing the fifth introductory stage.

The design challenge was straightforward: how could we help more new players experience the core game before deciding whether to continue?

In an August 2026 Android market test in the Philippines, we analyzed the first-session progression of 916 first-time players. Of those players, 810 (88.4%) reached the initial gameplay milestone, while 533 (58.2%) reached their first PvP match—the completion milestone for that particular build.

The losses were cumulative across the introductory journey. However, the most useful finding emerged when I compared transitions between activities with progression during combat.

For example, 789 players reached the fifth wave of Stage 1, but only 750 reached its reward-claim event, a 4.9% loss at that transition. By contrast, Stage 3 progressed from 625 players at the stage start to 617 at its fifth wave, a loss of only 1.3% across that combat segment. Several other notable drop-offs occurred near level-completion, reward, and return-to-menu transitions.

Reviewing the flow revealed a recurring pattern: several high-friction transitions coincided with “Level Complete” screens, which offered a single button followed by loading and a return to the main menu.

My hypothesis was that the game signaled completion too early. Players had won a battle, but had not yet experienced the depth of the game. For users who were still deciding whether the experience was worth their time, a prominent victory message and a return to the menu could feel like a natural point to stop.

The game was signaling completion before players reached its core loop.

This was not simply a question of making early battles easier. It was a problem of pacing, continuity, and motivation: the FTUE needed to build anticipation for what came next rather than repeatedly suggesting that the experience had already ended.

I also avoided treating every drop-off as the same problem. Our acquisition analysis suggested that some losses between tapping Start and entering the first combat wave reflected poorly matched traffic and/or device-performance limitations. Later PvP abandonment was also assessed separately: that test build lacked a developed ranking and PvP reward structure, limiting reasons to continue after several matches. These were working explanations, not causal conclusions drawn from the funnel alone.

Across approximately 12 FTUE experiments, I explored changes to onboarding, the volume and timing of early rewards, the duration of the first three stages, storytelling, and the game's presentation. I used progression funnels, player behavior, and retention data to evaluate these successive versions.

Across the earlier tested versions, vertical-slice completion rose from 49% to 68% (+19 percentage points), and Day-1 retention improved by 32% relative. These were encouraging results from a broader sequence of iterations; they should not be attributed to a single screen change or feature without a controlled comparison.

Importantly, those improvements are separate from the August 2026 diagnostic funnel described above and do not measure the new cinematic onboarding, which is still in development.

The funnel diagnosis informed a more ambitious next step: replacing the five separately completed levels with a continuous cinematic and interactive onboarding experience. Rather than using a victory screen and explicit return-to-menu flow at the end of every stage, the new structure uses dialogue, cutscenes, contextual tutorials, and increasingly complex battles to connect one chapter to the next.

Each short chapter teaches a new layer of gameplay while creating a reason to continue:

Chapter 1 — Core Actions & Collection. Players learn to position creatures on the grid, start battles, and unlock creatures using the gacha system.

Chapter 2 — Merging & Boss Encounters. Players learn to merge creatures, face a boss encounter, and receive an Epic creature as a reward.

Chapter 3 — Challenge, Recovery & Character Growth. Ranged enemies introduce new threats. Players encounter health loss and the comeback system, then learn leveling, character evolution, and a second character summon.

Chapter 4 — Complete Team & Power Fantasy. Players fight alongside a pre-positioned Mythic creature, experience a more complete combat scenario, and earn that creature to complete their first five-character team.

Chapter 5 — Transition Into the Meta Game. A final boss encounter, Mythic summoning, and reconstruction of the village center introduce building progression. The chapter opens the broader interface, including PvP, PvE, missions, shop, and battle passes.

Finishing Chapter 5 does not unlock all content. It gives players freedom to prioritize PvP or PvE, while guide missions provide continued direction. Village expansion and subsequent progression introduce further features such as events, idle resource collection, expeditions, village defense, additional Mythic creatures, and themed PvE paths.

The redesigned FTUE follows three principles: progressive complexity (teach mechanics in context), continuous motivation (replace premature closure with meaningful next steps), and guided autonomy (give players freedom after they understand the foundations, with optional progression guidance).

The cinematic version remains in development and has not yet been market-tested. Its effectiveness will be assessed through chapter-by-chapter completion, transition drop-offs, time to core gameplay, first PvP/PvE participation, mission engagement, and D1 retention. These are planned validation measures, not results.

Key learning: Onboarding is not only about explaining controls. The sequence of rewards, transitions, and moments of closure shapes whether players perceive the experience as something worth continuing. Funnel analysis helped me turn that insight into testable design directions—and into a more cohesive introduction to Lucky Clash.