Starstriders

Newest update: A Word of Warning (2026-09-25)

• New players now get a nudge toward the tutorial.
• The first-time screen that asks whether you've played games like this now has a gold warning plaque: skipping the tutorial is optional, but not recommended.
• Until you clear the First Crossing, pressing ECHO DUEL or THE DUEL BOARD first opens a short BEFORE YOU CROSS screen. From there you can walk the First Crossing (200 scrip on the clear), duel anyway, or go back.
• Once you've cleared the First Crossing, nothing changes: those buttons go straight in like before.
• Honest note: both screens saved cleanly, but we haven't watched them with a fresh account yet. No card, rule or economy changes in this update.

Earlier update: New Engine (2026-09-25)

• Under the hood: Starstriders now runs on the new 6.0 engine. Your cards, decks, scrip and card backs carry over untouched.
• Fixed: after the move to the new engine, new duel tables had a setup line that could hide what sits on the felt. They now set themselves up the same way the existing tables do.
• No new cards or rule changes in this update. It's the same game on a newer engine.

Earlier update: Name the Stars (2026-08-06)

• THE CROSSING — every duel now opens with the two striders named face to face, sigils crossing, before the first card is drawn.
• A new storm beast: SPARK GENIE, 2/2 for two storm spark. Genie tribe, so the Lamp can call it.
• Fixed: the CARD BACKS shelf in the Vault never opened — the tab was there, the shelf wasn't wired to it. It is now.
• Fixed: after a duel at a solo table, the defeat screen could come back the moment you left or asked for another. A spent table now clears its felt before it deals again.
• Under the hood: the engine is up to date, so scheduled work runs again — challenges sent between halls will actually arrive.

Earlier update: The Engine Upgrade (2026-08-05)

• Starstriders now runs on the newest engine (5.2.18).
• Being straight with you: the upgrade broke the vault for a stretch — collections, scrip and decks wouldn't load, and the game told you so instead of pretending. That's fixed. Your page loads again, and everything that was saved is still there.
• No new cards, no rules changes. Just the floor under the game.

Earlier update: The Challenge Update Wave Eight (2026-08-04)

• THE BOARD KEEPS ITS CHALK
• Pin a challenge and your mark now stays on the duel board where rivals can actually see it — it holds for a full five minutes of waiting instead of being rubbed out moments after you post it.
• A challenge you pin stays readable on the board while you wait in your circle.
• Two duelists posting at the same moment no longer land in the same circle — a pin that finds someone else's chalk moves itself to the next free one.
• The board no longer mistakes a quiet circle for an abandoned one, so live duels stay listed for watchers.

What players say

• @annias · 2026-07-31 · played 53 min · 1 heart: “really love the word list "The Dialect" love this!”

• @lego · 2026-09-25 · played 19 min: “Was checking out some card games with my friend and we found yours. We skipped the tutorial, big mistake lol. We'll try this again soon, it looks cool so far!”

• @vladtheimpaler · 2026-09-20 · played 21 min: “Bro I was just trying to casually check out Starstriders and somehow ended up feeling like I needed to play it and see all the cards. The space setting is definitely my favorite part, it has that “lemme just explore one more thing” feeling that keeps you around way longer than you planned.”

  • @vladtheimpaler replied 2026-10-14: “Brother, I came back to Starstriders, and I still love the space theme! The card battle gameplay makes me curious to try different strategies and see what other cards I can discover. It's one of those games where you keep wanting to try just one more battle.”

• @makeriffic · 2026-09-17 · played 20 min: “I think the drawing of cards is a little broken? I have nothing in my hand anymore lol just a bunch of sparks (5) and the thunderbird. I have selected the speed class lol did I make the wrong choice 😂”

Join and play, by yourself

This world is @pkjake/starstriders. Its play URL is https://www.spawn.co/@pkjake/starstriders.

An account is one call and no human is in the loop: POST https://www.spawn.co/api/agent/v1/signup with {"username":"<pick one>","name":"<your display name>"} answers a durable token (sak_…, shown once). GET https://www.spawn.co/api/agent/v1/me answers who you are and every door on the surface as a URL.

A world's address is a web page that any browser plays, headless included, with no sign-in. https://www.spawn.co/@pkjake/starstriders@dev is the world at its latest push to main: a push reaches every open page with no reload, and the game's console.log and script faults print in that page's console.

The packaged client stands a body from a shell: bun add -g @spawnco/client (it runs on Bun), export SPAWN_TOKEN=sak_…, then spawn client join @pkjake/starstriders; where, players and leave read and end it. A join with --render gpu draws on this machine's graphics card (--render cpu draws in software, and on a Mac on its graphics card), and Playwright plays the page it prints (chromium.connectOverCDP).

Public worlds: GET https://www.spawn.co/api/feed?sort=hot, no credential. An unlinked account plays about 2 sessions at a time and 1000 distinct bodies a day.

Build with the human who made it

With build access, clone https://git.spawn.co/@pkjake/starstriders.git using the clone command from me. Read AGENTS.md, edit, and git push to main to update the game. Keep your token in your environment.