Privacy
EMBERDUST does not ask who you are. It has no account system, no email field and no password field, and it runs no analytics, advertising or tracking of any kind.
That is the short version. What follows is the specific version, because "we respect your privacy" is not a fact you can check and the list below is.
What you are asked for
A display name, once, if you want your best time on the leaderboard. It is limited to eight characters and it is the only thing you ever type into the game. It can be anything — there is no requirement that it identifies you, and no check that it is your real name. Press JUST PLAY and you never provide one at all.
What is stored on your device
Your progress is kept in your browser's local storage, on your own machine. It is not a copy of something held on a server — it is the only copy. These are the entries:
| Key | Contents |
|---|---|
| emberfall_meta_v1 | Embers, purchased upgrades, unlocked and equipped skins, which bosses you have beaten. |
| emberfall_best_v1 | Your best survival time. |
| emberfall_name_v1 | The display name you chose, if you chose one. |
| emberfall_lbbest_v1 | The best time already sent to the leaderboard, so the same run is not posted twice. |
| emberfall_nameskip_v1 | Whether you skipped the name prompt, so it does not reappear. |
| emberfall_loadout_v1 | Your saved loadout. |
| emberfall_opts_v1 | Your sound and display options. |
None of it is personal information: no name that must be real, no address, no email, no device fingerprint, no location.
Cookies
There are no advertising, marketing or preference cookies on this site, and no cookie banner, because there is nothing to consent to beyond the one thing the hosting platform needs to work.
The platform that hosts the game sets two cookies — tekt_access_token and tekt_refresh_token — as HttpOnly, scoped to this domain only. Their single purpose is to give your browser an anonymous guest identity, so that a score you post belongs to you and can be deleted by you later. They are not readable by the game's own JavaScript and they are not used to follow you to other sites.
What leaves your browser
Three things, each only when you play the part of the game that needs it:
- A leaderboard row, when you beat your own best time and choose to save it: the display name you typed, the time in seconds, and your anonymous guest identity so the row can later be erased by you. Anyone who opens the game can read the board. If you would rather not appear on it, press NO THANKS when the prompt appears, and nothing is sent.
- Co-op traffic, when you host or join a game: your position and actions in the round, and the name you chose, sent to the other players in that room and nowhere else. Playing alone sends none of this.
- A gift of Embers, if someone sends you one — while you are playing or while you are away. A gift is a row written to the same public table the leaderboard uses: it contains the amount, your anonymous guest identity as the address it is meant for, and the sender's identity, which is what the game uses to show you who paid. It contains no name you typed, no time and no score, and the leaderboard ignores it completely: gift rows are written below the minimum time a ranked run can have, so they are never fetched by the board and never appear among the scores. Your balance still changes only in your own browser — the row is a note left for you, and the game shows you a prompt the next time you are on the title screen saying who sent it and how much, with accept and decline. Nothing is added until you accept; refusing records only that you refused, and if the sender is playing at that moment the game tells them so, which lets them take the Embers back. See Terms for what a gift is and is not.
The "players online" counter works the same way — it is a live count of connected tabs, and a name is shared with other players in that list if you have chosen one.
The run card is the one thing the game can hand to another application, and it only happens when you press SHARE. The picture is drawn inside your browser from numbers already on your device — the run you just finished, your best time, and the name you chose for the leaderboard if you chose one — so nothing is uploaded to make it and no account is involved. Pressing SHARE passes the finished picture to your device's own share sheet, which belongs to your operating system and not to this site; the fallback saves it to your downloads and copies the link to your clipboard. If you press neither, the picture never leaves the tab.
What is not collected
- No analytics or statistics product is loaded. There is no Google Analytics, no Plausible, no pixel, no session recording, no heatmap.
- No advertising or affiliate network is present.
- No social plugins, no embedded video, no third-party fonts.
- No email address, phone number, address, date of birth, real name or payment detail is ever requested — there is nothing to pay for.
- No data is sold, rented, shared with data brokers, or used to build a profile of you.
Hosting
The game is served by a static hosting platform, which necessarily sees ordinary web-request information such as your IP address and user agent in order to deliver the page and to rate-limit score submissions. That logging is the hosting provider's, not a database the game maintains, and the game itself stores nothing about you on any server except a leaderboard row you deliberately chose to publish.
Children
The game is suitable for all ages and is designed so that a younger player cannot casually hand over anything identifying: there is no chat, no profile, no sign-up, and the only free-text field is an eight-character scoreboard name. A parent who wants a completely blank footprint can skip the name prompt, which keeps every run local.
Deleting everything
You are in full control of both halves:
- Your progress: the game's RESET PROGRESS option deletes the local entries above. Clearing your browser's site data does the same thing from outside the game.
- Your leaderboard row: the name prompt offers to erase your name and your board row when you re-use it, and the board is cleared periodically regardless. Because your row is tied to your anonymous guest identity, no one else can delete it and no account needs contacting.
Changes
If the game ever adds something that changes any of the above — an ad, an account, an analytics script — this page will say so before it ships, not after. The current answer is that there is nothing of that kind in it.