Privacy Policy
Film Alchemy · Last updated 6 September 2026
Film Alchemy is a film-guessing game. It is built to need as little about you as possible, and this page describes exactly what it does collect, why, and what it never touches.
The short version
- There is no account. You never give us an email address, a password, a phone number or a name.
- Almost everything the game knows about you — what you have found, what you have unlocked, your settings — never leaves your device.
- The only thing sent to us is what appears on the global leaderboard: a nickname you choose, an avatar you pick from the actors in the game, and your star totals. You can turn it off, and take your row down, from Settings.
- The game shows optional adverts from Google AdMob. You are never shown one unless you tap a button asking to watch one in exchange for a hint. There are no banners, nothing between screens, and nothing on launch.
- The app reports a short, fixed list of things that happen while you play — which step of the opening you reached, that a film was found, that a hint was used. Nothing you type is ever included, and none of it can be linked to you personally. The whole list is below.
- You can delete your data at any time, from inside the app or by asking us.
What stays on your device
All of this is stored locally by the app and is not transmitted anywhere. Deleting the app deletes it.
- Films you have discovered and the order you found them in
- Actors and props you have unlocked
- Your daily-quest streak and history
- Clue and reveal charges, and which clues you have seen
- Sound and music preferences
- Whether you want the daily reminder
- Your nickname and avatar choice
- Which expansion packs you own
What is sent to us
Only for the global leaderboard, and only these fields:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| An anonymous ID | So your score updates rather than creating a new row each time. It is generated by Firebase, is not linked to any personal identity, and we never receive an email address or name from it. |
| Your nickname | To label your row on the board. |
| Your chosen avatar | An actor ID from the game, so your row has a face. |
| Weekly and all-time star totals | To rank the board. |
How the game is used
Film Alchemy reports a small, fixed list of things that happen while you play, so we can find out which parts of it confuse people. It is the only way we can tell the difference between a puzzle nobody solves and a puzzle nobody reaches.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Which step of the opening you reached, and whether you finished or skipped it | To find out where new players give up |
| That a film was found, its star tier, and how many you have | To see whether the game keeps going after the opening |
| That a Combine matched nothing, and how many elements were in it | The clearest sign someone is stuck |
| That hints, clues or reveals were used | To see whether help is reachable when it is needed |
| That an advert was offered, finished, abandoned or escaped | Adverts sometimes hang; this is how we find out |
| That a daily challenge was completed, and the streak length | To see whether the daily is worth keeping |
That list is the whole of it. Nothing you type is included — not your nickname, not a feedback note, nothing. There is no account, no name, no email address and no contact details attached to any of it. It is handled by Google Analytics for Firebase, which also records the general things any app does: the type of device, the country, the app version, and whether you came back the next day.
There is no separate switch for this in Settings — the list above is short and fixed on purpose, and everything on it is exactly as anonymous whether or not a toggle exists to disable it. Deleting your data still works the way it always has.
Feedback you send us
Settings has a Send feedback box. Nothing is sent unless you type something and press Send. When you do, we receive:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| What you wrote | It is the message. |
| The same anonymous ID | So two notes from the same person read as one conversation. |
| The app version and platform | Most problems only happen on one build or one kind of device. |
| How many films you have found | Where you were in the game when it happened. |
Signing in without an account
The game uses Firebase Anonymous Authentication. This creates a random identifier for your installation so your leaderboard row can be updated. It asks for nothing and tells us nothing about who you are. If you reinstall the app you will normally be given a new identifier, and your old leaderboard row will simply stop being updated.
As part of providing this service, Google's Firebase processes some technical information such as your IP address and basic device details. This is described in Firebase's own privacy documentation.
Adverts
The game uses Google AdMob to show rewarded video adverts. Everything about how they appear is deliberate:
- You ask for them. An advert only ever plays after you tap a button offering one — to reveal a clue, to get a hint, or to see what is left in a mix. Nothing interrupts you, and nothing plays on its own.
- They buy help, never progress. Watching one can make a puzzle easier. It cannot buy you a discovery, a star, a streak, an actor or a place on the leaderboard.
- There are no banner adverts, no full-screen adverts between screens, and nothing shown when the app opens.
To serve those adverts, Google receives information from your device. This typically includes your Advertising ID, your IP address, and general device and app information, and it may be used to measure and personalise adverts. We do not receive that information — it goes to Google, not to us — and we cannot connect it to your leaderboard row. What Google does with it is described in Google's advertising privacy notice and in AdMob's own documentation.
Your choices about adverts
- Simply do not tap them. Every film in the game can be found without watching a single advert. Clues and reveals are earned by playing — an advert only tops them up sooner — and the one thing adverts alone offer, a suggested pair when you are stuck, is a shortcut past a puzzle rather than a part of one.
- In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland you are asked, before any advert is requested, whether you consent to personalised adverts. You can reopen that choice at any time from Settings → Ads → Ad privacy choices. If you say no, you may still see adverts, but they will not be personalised.
- Anywhere, your phone's own settings can reset or delete your Advertising ID, or turn off ad personalisation entirely. On Android this is under Settings → Privacy → Ads.
Purchases
The game sells one optional expansion pack of extra actors. The transaction is handled entirely by Google Play. We never see or store your payment details — not your card, not your billing address, not your Google account. The app records only whether you own the pack, and it records that on your device.
Notifications
If you turn on the daily reminder, the game schedules one notification a day on your own device, and cancels it when you have finished the day's quest. It is scheduled locally: nothing is sent to us or to anyone else, there is no push server, and the reminder works with no internet connection at all. You can turn it off from Settings → Reminders or from your phone's notification settings.
Sharing
When you share a daily result, the game draws a card on your device and hands it, with a short line of text, to your own share sheet — and you choose where it goes. Nothing is sent to us, and nothing is uploaded anywhere by us: the picture is made on your phone and given straight to whichever app you pick.
Neither the card nor the text contains the answer to the puzzle. The elements you solved it with appear only as blank silhouettes and a question mark, so a post shows how the answer was shaped without spoiling it for anyone who has not played that day.
Children
Film Alchemy is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. The catalogue includes films made for adult audiences. Because the game is not aimed at children, the adverts are not requested under Google's child-directed settings; if you believe a child has been using the app and you want their leaderboard row removed, the Settings screen will do it immediately, and the contact address below will do it otherwise.
Your choices
- Change your nickname or avatar at any time from the Profile screen. The leaderboard updates with it.
- Leave the leaderboard from Settings → Leaderboard. Turning it off stops anything being published, and takes down the row already there — leaving it up would make the switch a lie about everything except future scores.
- Delete your leaderboard row on its own, from the same place, while staying on the board.
- Remove your local data by uninstalling the app, or by resetting progress from Settings.
- Turn off the daily reminder from Settings → Reminders.
- Change your advert choices — see the section above.
None of this needs to go through us, and none of it needs an account. If something here does not work, the contact address below still reaches a person.
Who else is involved
- Google Firebase — hosting, anonymous sign-in and the leaderboard database.
- Google AdMob — the rewarded adverts, and the consent form shown where one is required.
- Google Play — app distribution and purchases.
We do not sell or rent your information to anyone. We share nothing beyond what is described above: the leaderboard fields you chose to publish, and whatever your device passes to Google when you ask to watch an advert. Some privacy laws — California's among them — treat personalised advertising itself as "sharing" or "selling" regardless of who is paid; the controls in Your choices about adverts above are how you say no to it.
Changes to this policy
If the app starts collecting anything new, this page will be updated before that change ships, and the date at the top will change with it. Rewarded adverts and the daily reminder were added on 15 August 2026, and this page was rewritten for them.
On 22 August 2026 the summary at the top of this page was corrected. It still claimed there was no analytics in the app, which stopped being true when usage reporting was added — the full description further down was right, and the one-line summary had been left behind. Nothing about what the app collects changed on that date; only this page did.
On 6 September 2026 the Settings toggle for usage reporting was removed, and this page, along with the delete-your-data page, was updated to stop describing it. The list of what is reported did not change and nothing on it was ever linked to a name or account — the toggle controlled whether that same anonymous list was sent at all, and it no longer exists to turn off.
Deleting your data
There is no account to close. Your leaderboard row comes down from Settings, and everything else lives on your device and goes when you reset progress or uninstall. If you would rather we did it, or the app will not open, ask us here — that page lists exactly what is deleted and what is not ours to delete.
Contact
For any question about this policy, or to ask for your leaderboard entry to be removed, email trivia@redkite.io — the same address shown on the Film Alchemy listing on Google Play.