Rethinking Lucky Clash's Onboarding: From Premature Closure to Continuous Progression

Lucky Clash combines grid-based creature combat, character collection, team-building, PvE, and PvP. In the test build, new players progressed through five separate introductory PvE stages before reaching the PvP experience. Each completed stage was followed by a “Level Complete” screen, a single confirmation button, a loading transition, and a return to the main menu.

The stages taught mechanics, but their presentation raised a design question: was the onboarding giving players a reason to continue—or signaling that they had already finished?

For this test, a player was considered to have completed the intended vertical slice once they played at least one PvP match. Reaching the end of an introductory PvE stage alone did not constitute completion.

I examined an August 2026 Android market-test funnel from a build using our redesigned core gameplay, containing 916 first-time players in the Philippines. This diagnostic was conducted after the core exploration and redesign discussed in Case 2, and before the new cinematic onboarding. The funnel shows 836 players (91.3%) entering the first combat wave and 533 players (58.2%) completing all PvE stages (operationally measured by reaching the first PvP match in that build).

The key insight came from looking beyond cumulative losses and comparing transitions between stages with combat within each stage. The chart tracks the beginning and final combat wave of each PvE stage, so every drop can be read either as a loss during combat or as a loss between one stage's Level Complete Screen and the start of the next.

In every PvE stage, more players left after the Level Complete Screen than during that stage's combat. Between Stage 1 and Stage 2, the funnel fell from 789 to 701 players (11.2%), while Stage 1 combat itself lost 5.6% (836 to 789). Between Stage 2 and Stage 3, it fell from 674 to 625 (7.3%), compared with 3.9% during Stage 2 combat. By Stage 3, combat lost only 1.3% (625 to 617), but the following transition still lost 4.4% (617 to 590). The first transition shows where the losses began: 789 players reached the final combat wave, but only 750 collected the stage rewards afterward—a 4.9% loss between these two tracked events—and only 701 started Stage 2.

These patterns did not prove that a victory screen caused each departure. They did, however, identify a recurring UX decision worth redesigning: the moment the game interrupted the player's momentum and presented an apparent endpoint.

The original “Level Complete” screen communicated that players had achieved something, but also introduced a strong stopping cue. The only way forward was to tap a button, watch a loading transition, return to the main menu, and actively decide to start another stage.

My design hypothesis was that this experience created closure too early. Players who were not yet engaged enough to seek out the next stage could interpret a victory screen and menu return as the end of what the game had to offer—even though the fuller experience began after the introductory sequence.

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

This was a problem of perceived progress, continuity, and motivation, not simply stage difficulty. Instead of repeatedly ending the experience, onboarding needed to create anticipation for the next mechanic, encounter, and reward.

I also separated this diagnosis from two other patterns:

• The loss between tapping Start and entering the first combat wave was associated in our campaign analysis with poor audience fit and/or device-performance issues. I did not treat it as evidence that the combat UX itself was the principal cause.
• The drop between the Third PvP Match and the Fourth PvP Match happened in a test build with no developed PvP ranking or reward progression. The lack of further goals was a plausible contributing factor, but not an FTUE completion failure, since these players had already completed the PvE onboarding and begun playing PvP.

These are design and product interpretations supported by project context; the funnel alone does not establish causation.

I began replacing the five independent stages with a cinematic, interactive onboarding where the story and combat advance together. Dialogue and cutscenes connect tutorial moments and encounters, replacing repeated victory-screen and explicit loading-to-menu interruptions.

The purpose is not to teach everything immediately. Each chapter introduces a small set of mechanics, increases combat complexity, and offers a meaningful progression milestone.

Chapter 1 — Core Combat & Collection. Position creatures on the grid, start a battle, and learn how to obtain new creatures through gacha.

Chapter 2 — Merge & Boss Encounter. Learn to merge creatures, face a boss, and receive an Epic creature as a reward.

Chapter 3 — Defeat, Recovery & Character Growth. Face ranged enemies and learn the health-loss and comeback systems. Then discover character leveling and evolution, earn another summoning currency, and use it for a second gacha summon.

Chapter 4 — Team Composition & Mythic Reward. Play a complete encounter with a pre-positioned Mythic creature assisting the player. After the battle, receive that creature and complete the first five-creature team.

Chapter 5 — Transition Into the Meta Game. Complete a full battle, perform a Mythic summon, defeat a final boss, and rebuild the village center, introducing building upgrades. Unlock the wider interface—including PvP, PvE, guide and daily missions, shop, and battle passes—and begin choosing what to pursue next.

After Chapter 5, the entire game is not unlocked all at once. Players gain freedom to focus on PvP or PvE, while progression-guide missions provide direction. Over time, village expansion opens additional buildings and features such as events, idle resource production, idle expeditions, village defense, more Mythic creatures, and new themed PvE paths with distinct rewards.

The redesign is guided by three principles:

Continuity before closure. Reduce interruption-heavy transitions until players have had a chance to discover the game's broader loop.

Learn by doing. Introduce combat, merging, recovery, character growth, and collection in the context of increasingly complex encounters.

Guided autonomy. Move from a structured introduction to player-driven PvP/PvE progression, with guide missions supporting—but not replacing—choice.

The new onboarding is still in development and has not been tested. I plan to evaluate its effectiveness using chapter-entry and chapter-completion funnels, transition-level abandonment, onboarding completion, time to first PvP/PvE participation, guide-mission engagement, and D1 retention. These are validation objectives, not achieved results.

Key learning: Funnel analysis did more than identify where players left; it helped expose where the game's presentation of progress might have been working against the player's motivation. The redesign is a hypothesis-driven response to that finding, awaiting real-world validation.