Answers from the night desk

Yes, straight away. Open any game and it starts in demo mode with 20,000 practice credits that exist only in the open page. Demo mode — nothing is saved: progress is not saved, and a reload starts you again from 20,000. Join free if you want your Glints, level, favourites and Observatory rewards kept between visits.

A free social casino games site for adults in the UK, built around a night-sky observatory. There are 24 games of our own: slots, Hold & Spin, cascades, instant games and tables. You play them with Glints, a points score with no cash value. It is entertainment and nothing else: no real money play and no prizes of monetary value. The name is our own word-play on "star" and "vellum", the fine parchment that old star charts were drawn on.

Nothing at all. Starvellan has no shop, no subscription and no in-app purchases, and no page will ever ask you for a card number or bank details.

Anyone aged 18 or over who lives in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The sign-up form asks for your date of birth and will not create an account for someone under 18.

A current version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, on a phone, tablet or computer, with JavaScript and site storage allowed. Be careful with private or incognito windows: they wipe their storage on closing, and any account made inside one disappears with it.

In the storage of the browser you joined with, on that one device. None of it travels to our server, so we have no way to view, search for or bring back an account. Your password and recovery key are kept only as PBKDF2-SHA-256 hashes.

It is a sixteen-character code, split into four groups, that appears once at the end of sign-up. It is the one and only way to set a new password if you forget the old one, so copy it into a password manager or onto paper. While signed in, you can issue a fresh key from your account by confirming your password.

We can't, because we never see your account. Instead, open the reset page from the sign-in screen and enter your email, your recovery key and the new password you want. You will be handed a new recovery key at the end, and the old one stops working.

Make sure you are on the same device, in the same browser, with the same email you joined with. Five wrong passwords in a row pause sign-in for one minute as a guard against guessing. If this site's data has been cleared from the browser, the account is gone for good.

No. Each account belongs to one browser on one device and cannot be copied across. You are welcome to make another account elsewhere, but it keeps its own Glints and progress.

On your account page, choose to delete the account and confirm with your password. Clearing this site's data in the browser does the same job. Both are final and cannot be undone.

Nothing outside the games. Glints are a score: they have no cash value, we never sell them, and they cannot be withdrawn, transferred, traded or swapped for money, goods or anything else. Every new account opens with 25,000 Glints.

Take a free top-up of 5,000 Glints and keep playing. Top-ups cost nothing and are never for sale. Demo players don't need one: practice credits refill on their own.

No. They stay inside your own account, and nobody can give, buy or sell them. Offering Glints or accounts for trade, here or anywhere else, is against our Terms of Use.

The Observatory is where Vela keeps the extras for account holders: the Compass Wheel with its eight points worth 500 to 10,000 Glints, three face-down Star cards worth 200 to 2,000 Glints each, Missions and your Orbit meter. All of it is on the house. The wheel rests for a few hours after a spin and new Star cards turn up later, both on their own, with no deadlines.

You are given three small goals at a time, for example trying three different games or playing ten rounds at the tables. Collect a finished goal and its Glints land in your balance; once all three are collected, a new set appears by itself.

Your own play. Two per cent of the Glints you play flows into the meter. The first mark at 2,000 pays 1,000 Glints, then 6,000 pays 2,500, 15,000 pays 6,000 and 40,000 pays 15,000, after which the meter goes back to the first mark. It is personal, so nobody else's play moves it.

Each round you play adds experience, and enough experience lifts your level. Every new level brings a gift of level × 150 Glints. The six tiers are Spark from level 1, Glow from level 5, Comet from level 10, Nova from level 20, Pulsar from level 35 and Galaxy from level 60.

Nobody. Your browser's cryptographic random number generator draws it at the moment you play, and each round stands on its own: your account, level, balance and history make no difference. The fair play page goes into the detail.

Only in what is kept. Guests and account holders get identical games, rules and random draws; an account simply saves your Glints, level and rewards.

Press "Rules & pays" in any game. It opens a page with how the game plays, what starts its features and the full list of what everything pays.

They describe the rhythm. Calm games hand back smaller amounts more often, wild games have longer quiet stretches broken by bigger moments, and lively games sit between the two.

A reload sorts out most glitches. If it comes back, use the contact form to tell us the game, what you saw and roughly when. Where a fault shows a result that disagrees with the rules, the rules stand.

Two: a time reminder that checks in every 30, 60 or 90 minutes (or never, if you switch it off), and Take a break. Both sit in your player care settings.

Pick 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days and every game on your account pauses for that long, showing a pause screen in place of the board. A break cannot be cut short, and the rest of the site carries on working as normal.

No. Playing or success in social casino gaming does not imply future success at real-money gambling. These games exist to entertain, not to prepare anyone for betting.

Call the National Gambling Helpline, run by GamCare, free and in confidence on 0808 8020 133 at any hour. GAMSTOP, Gordon Moody, Gambling Therapy, the NHS and Gamban offer support too, and our Safer play page lists them all.

None. The site keeps a handful of small entries in your browser's storage so that your account, the age question and your choices work, and the Cookie Policy names every one of them.

No. Starvellan runs no adverts, no analytics and no tracking pixels, and it loads no scripts, fonts or images from other companies.

Two things only: messages sent through the contact form (name, email, topic, message, IP address and time, held for up to 12 months) and brief counters that stop the form being flooded (held for one hour). Accounts never reach the server.

Use the Cookie settings link in the footer of any page to bring the notice back, then accept or reject optional storage. The only optional entry is the sound setting for visitors who are not signed in.