Privacy Policy

The short version

Emberfall Caldera is a single-player puzzle game. The game itself runs entirely on your device: no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, and your progress never leaves the phone.

There is exactly one exception, and it is the only thing on this page that involves a server at all: if you allow notifications, the app registers this installation so we can send them. What that means is set out in full in section 5.

• No accountYou never create one. There is no username, no password, no profile held anywhere but on your device.
• Progress stays putLevels, story, stars and wallet all live inside the app. None of it is uploaded.
• No analyticsNo SDK counts your taps, sessions or sessions-per-week. None is installed.
• No ads, no trackingNo advertising network, no advertising identifier, no cross-app or cross-site tracking.
• No data soldNothing is sold, rented or shared with data brokers, ever.
• Push, only if you allow itDecline the prompt and nothing is ever registered or sent. The game is unaffected.

1What this policy covers

This policy describes how the Emberfall Caldera mobile game for iPhone and iPad handles information, and how this website — the page you are reading and the support page — handles the little it is given.

It does not cover the App Store itself. When you download, purchase or update the game, that is a transaction between you and Apple, governed by Apple's own privacy policy.

2What the game stores, and where

The game keeps one save file inside its own private storage area on your device. Nothing in it leaves the device, and no other app can read it. It holds:

• your progress through the caldera — which levels are unlocked, cleared and how many laurels each earned;
• your in-game wallet: dust, gems, lives and any boosters you hold;
• which story scenes and lore entries you have unlocked;
• your daily-reward streak and the timestamps the lives timer needs;
• your settings — music and effects volume, haptics, language;
• your Delver's name and portrait, if you set them.

Separately, in the device Keychain, the app keeps one random identifier for this installation. It is used for notifications and nothing else, and section 5 explains it.

3What is not collected

To be specific rather than reassuring, the game does not collect, request or transmit any of the following:

• name, email address, phone number or postal address;
• contacts, calendars, messages, health data or files;
• precise or coarse location, and no location permission is requested;
• the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), or any advertising identifier of any kind;
• the device's own identifiers — no serial number, no hardware identifier, nothing that would still be the same after a reinstall or that any other app could recognise;
• crash reports, performance traces, heat maps or behavioural telemetry;
• your progress, scores, purchases or portrait;
• browsing history, or activity in any other app.

The game declares to Apple that it does not use data to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies, and it never presents the App Tracking Transparency prompt, because it has nothing to ask for.

4Permissions, and why they exist

The game asks for three things, and every one of them is safe to decline — the rest of the game is unaffected either way.

Camera and photo library

Asked at the point of use — only if you choose to set a portrait for your Delver. The image you pick is cropped and written into the game's own private storage as part of your save file. It is never uploaded, never analysed and never shared. If you decline, your Delver simply keeps the default portrait.

Notifications

Asked once, on first run, on the screen showing this policy. Some are local — scheduled by the app on your own device, a reminder that your lives have refilled or that a daily reward is waiting — and some are push, sent by us. Granting the permission enables both; declining it disables both, and the game plays exactly the same either way. Section 5 covers what push involves.

Haptics and audio

Vibration and sound need no permission and involve no data. They are listed here only so the picture is complete.

5Notifications, and the one thing that leaves your device

If — and only if — you allow notifications, the app registers this installation so that a push can be delivered to it. This is the single place where the app talks to a server, so it is set out here in full rather than summarised.

What is sent

• a push token, issued by Firebase Cloud Messaging. It is the address a notification is delivered to. It is not readable as anything about you, it changes on its own from time to time, and it stops working the moment you delete the app;
• an installation identifier — a random value generated on your device the first time it is needed and kept in the Keychain. It is not derived from you, your device or your Apple Account. Its only job is to let one registration replace an earlier one instead of piling up.

That is the whole payload. No name, no email, no progress, no purchase history and no location travels with it. The receiving server also sees your IP address, as every server does for every request ever made to it; it is not stored against you or used to work out where you are.

Who is involved

Push on iOS cannot work without Apple: notifications are delivered through Apple's Push Notification service, and Apple sees the delivery, as it does for every app on the phone. Firebase Cloud Messaging, a Google service, issues the token and routes the message. Google therefore processes the token on our behalf and is bound by its own terms. Firebase Analytics is not installed, nor Crashlytics, nor any other Firebase product — the app includes the messaging component alone.

What it is used for

Sending you a notification. Nothing else. It is not used to profile you, not combined with anything else, not shared with advertisers and not sold.

Turning it off

Decline the prompt and nothing is ever registered — no token is requested and no request is made. If you allowed it and change your mind, switch notifications off in iOS Settings → Notifications → Emberfall Caldera; delivery stops immediately. Deleting the app invalidates the token for good. You can also ask us to delete the registration outright through the support form.

6Purchases

The game offers optional in-app purchases of in-game currency. These run through Apple's In-App Purchase system. When you buy something:

• Apple handles the entire payment. Your card details, billing address and Apple Account are submitted to Apple and are never visible to the game;
• the app receives only a confirmation that a specific product was purchased, and credits your wallet on the device accordingly;
• restoring purchases asks Apple what you already own. That exchange, too, is between your device and Apple.

Refunds are issued by Apple, not by us. Apple's Report a Problem page is the only route to one — the support page explains how to reach it.

7This website and the support form

These pages carry no cookies, no analytics scripts, no tracking pixels and no third-party embeds. Every font and image is embedded in the page itself rather than fetched from a content network, so loading one of these pages makes no request to anybody but this site, and simply reading it tells no one else that you did.

The one place you can hand over information is the form on the support page, and only if you choose to fill it in. That form sends us what you type: your message, the topic you pick, and optionally a name and a reply address so we can answer. If you would rather stay anonymous, leave those blank and send the message anyway — you will simply not get a reply.

• Used for — answering your question and fixing what you reported. Nothing else.
• Not used for — marketing, mailing lists, profiling, or passing to anyone selling anything.
• Kept — for as long as it takes to resolve the matter and to spot a recurring bug, then deleted. In practice, no longer than twelve months.
• Please do not send — passwords, card numbers, or anything you would not want written down. Support will never ask for them.

The web server keeps ordinary short-lived request logs to stay online and to fend off abuse. Those logs are not used to build any profile of you, and are rotated away.

8Children

Emberfall Caldera is suitable for a general audience and is not directed at children under 13. It knowingly collects no personal information from anyone, of any age — which is the strongest guarantee a game can offer a young player.

Because purchases are real, parents and guardians may want Screen Time restrictions or Ask to Buy switched on in iOS. The support page has a short guide.

9Your rights, and how to use them

Privacy law — including the GDPR in Europe, the UK GDPR, and the CCPA/CPRA in California — gives you rights to access, correct, delete, port and restrict the processing of your personal data, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them.

Where your data is concerned, those rights are unusually simple to satisfy here:

• In the game — everything is already in your hands. Deleting the app deletes your save file, your portrait and every setting along with it. No copy of any of that exists anywhere else, so there is nothing for us to hand over, correct or erase on your behalf.
• Your push registration — the token and installation identifier described in section 5 are the only data we hold about a device. Ask through the support form and we will delete the registration; turning notifications off in iOS Settings, or deleting the app, stops delivery immediately in any case.
• In a support message — if you wrote to us, ask through the same form and we will send you a copy of that correspondence, correct it, or delete it.

We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under California law, and we never have.

10Security

Your save file sits in the app's private container, protected by iOS's own sandbox and by device encryption whenever your device is locked with a passcode. This website is served over HTTPS, and the support form is submitted over the same encrypted connection.

Push registrations are held separately from anything else and contain no personal information — a delivery address and a random identifier, and nothing they could be matched against.

No system is perfect, but the surface here is deliberately small: data that is never sent cannot be intercepted, and there is no account database here to lose.

11Changes to this policy

If the game ever gains a feature that changes any of the above — cloud saves, say, or a leaderboard — this policy will be updated before that feature ships, and the date at the top will change with it. Material changes will also be noted in the App Store release notes for that version.

Continuing to play after an update means you accept the revised policy. Earlier versions can be requested through the support form.