Rankbreaker Heads to External Beta This Weekend

After months of development and internal testing, we’ve reached a major milestone. The Rankbreaker tutorial is finished, polished, and ready to guide new players through their first steps into our tactical card battler. This weekend marks another significant moment as we’re opening up external beta testing to our first two testers outside the core development team.

The tutorial takes players through the core mechanics of Rankbreaker in a carefully structured sequence. It starts with the fundamentals: understanding the three-lane battlefield where victory comes from controlling two out of three lanes through raw power. From there, players learn about deck construction and the critical balance between characters and disruptors that makes each match feel different.

We’ve built the tutorial around the idea that the best way to learn Rankbreaker is to actually play it. Rather than overwhelming new players with walls of text, we introduce each concept right before it becomes relevant. When you need to understand disruptors, we show you one in action. When energy management becomes important, we explain it in the context of the cards you’re holding.

One of the most important mechanics we teach is the Mulligan phase. Before each match, players can swap up to three cards from their opening hand, but each card can only be swapped once. This creates interesting decisions right from the start. Do you swap that high-cost card hoping for something cheaper? Do you keep a powerful card even if you can’t play it for several rounds? These early choices set the tone for the entire match.

The tutorial also introduces players to locations, which are revealed over the first three rounds of play. Each location has unique rules that affect gameplay in that lane. Some locations favor aggressive strategies while others reward careful planning. Learning to adapt your tactics based on which locations appear is a key skill that separates good players from great ones.

We’ve paid special attention to the pacing. Energy management is introduced gradually, starting with the basic concept that you gain one energy per round and spend it to play cards. The tutorial doesn’t bog players down with every possible scenario. Instead, it focuses on building intuition through actual play.

The card resolution system gets its own dedicated explanation because understanding priority is crucial. When both players commit cards to the same location, they resolve one at a time with the most powerful card resolving first. This creates a natural back-and-forth where reading your opponent and timing your plays correctly makes all the difference.

Choosing external beta testers has been a deliberate process. We’re starting small with just two people this weekend because we want detailed, thoughtful feedback on the entire new player experience. These testers will be the first people outside our immediate circle to go through the tutorial and jump into real matches. Their fresh perspective is invaluable.

What we’re looking for from this initial beta phase goes beyond just bug reports, though those are certainly welcome. We want to know if the tutorial properly prepares players for their first real match. Does the pacing feel right? Are there moments of confusion that we’ve overlooked because we’re too close to the project? Do the mechanics click in the way we intend them to?

The tutorial ends with a simple message: you’re ready. At that point, players have seen every core system they need to compete. They understand deck building, the Mulligan phase, energy management, location effects, and card resolution. Everything after that is about developing strategy and learning the deeper tactics that emerge from these systems working together.

This weekend represents more than just a technical milestone. It’s the first time Rankbreaker will exist in the hands of players who have no preconceptions about what it should be. They’ll experience it fresh, the way thousands of future players will when we eventually launch. Their feedback will help us refine not just the tutorial but the entire onboarding experience.

We’re keeping the beta small for now, but this is just the beginning. As we incorporate feedback and continue polishing, we’ll gradually expand testing to more players. Each wave of testers brings new perspectives and helps us build a better game.

The journey from concept to playable game has been long, but seeing the tutorial come together and knowing that real players will soon be battling it out across three lanes makes it all worthwhile. This is the foundation we’re building on, and getting it right matters more than rushing to add features.

So here’s to the weekend, to our first external beta testers, and to the next phase of Rankbreaker’s development. The tutorial is done. The game is ready. Now we get to see what happens when players start breaking ranks.