Privacy Policy

Which game this covers

Gothika: Night of the Bell is a single-player game. There is no sign-in, no account, no servers and no other players — no chat of any kind. It runs entirely on your device. The only information anyone receives is what Google collects if you choose to watch a rewarded advert.

Blackwood Forge is single-player at heart and the whole game can be played offline. Signing in with Google Play Games is optional, and exists only so that guilds, guild chat and the arena ladder can work.

Where a section below applies to only one game, it is tagged. Everything else applies to both.

Playing on your device

Your progress is saved in storage private to the app, on your device. In Gothika: Night of the Bell that is your run and stage progress, your banked Resonance, the upgrades you pick and your settings. In Blackwood Forge it is your character name, level, gold and currencies, materials, gear, buildings, quests, and the counters and timestamps the game needs to work. On its own, none of this leaves your device.

Blackwood Forge The game also creates a random identifier for your save the first time you play. It is generated on your device, is not linked to your phone, your Google account or any advertising identifier, and cannot be used to recognise you in any other app.

If you never sign in — and in Night of the Bell there is nothing to sign in to — we operate no analytics and receive nothing about you: not that you play, not when you play, not who you are. The one exception is a rewarded advert you choose to watch; see Advertising below.

Uninstalling either game deletes all of it.

Advertising

Both games show optional rewarded adverts only. Nothing is ever forced on you: there are no adverts between screens, none when the game opens, and none you did not ask for. You choose to watch one in exchange for something in the game, or you never watch one at all.

When you choose to watch an advert, it is served by Google AdMob. To do that, Google and its advertising partners collect your device's advertising ID, an approximate location worked out from your IP address, and information about how you interacted with the advert. That happens under Google's advertising policies — we do not receive any of it.

You can reset or delete your advertising ID at any time in Settings → Privacy → Ads (on some phones, Settings → Google → Ads) on your device.

We do not run analytics, and nothing about you is sold to anyone.

If you sign in with Google Play Games Blackwood Forge

Signing in is optional. It exists so that guilds, guild chat and the arena ladder can work, none of which are possible on a device that cannot see other players. Gothika: Night of the Bell has no sign-in, so none of this section applies to it.

When you sign in, Google gives us a Play Games player ID. It identifies you to us and to no one else — it is not your email address, not your real name and not your Google account, and it is specific to this game. We store it, and alongside it:

• The display name you choose, plus a folded version of it (lower-cased, accents stripped, repeated letters collapsed) used only to stop two players claiming names that look identical.
• Your highest Battle Power, and when you reached it. This seeds the arena ladder.
• Your furthest stage and number of awakenings, used to sanity-check the above.
• A little cosmetic appearance — the class and body you chose and the colour tier of your gear-aura — so the arena can draw an opponent as themselves. It says nothing about your real identity, and reveals nothing about your actual gear.
• Your guild, your rank in it, and when you joined or left.
• Guild chat messages you send, and any messages a guild leader pins.
• Guild donations you make.
• Reports you file about another player, including who you reported and why.
• Players you block, so that blocking follows you to another device.
• Your damage to the weekly world boss, so the total across all players can be shown. It is kept for the current week only.
• When your account was created and last seen.

We do not receive your email address, your real name, your contacts, your location, your photos, your files, or any advertising identifier.

How long it is kept

• Guild chat messages are deleted after three days. This is enforced by the server, not by policy.
• Pinned messages stay until a guild leader unpins them or the guild is deleted.
• Everything else is kept while your account exists, and is deleted when you delete it.

Server logs

Our server keeps ordinary access logs: the IP address a request came from, the address requested, the result, and the time. They are used to diagnose faults and abuse. The contents of requests are never logged, so your chat messages do not appear in them. Logs roll over and old ones are discarded automatically.

Cloud backup Blackwood Forge

If you sign in with Google Play Games, your save is backed up to your own Google account using Play Games Saved Games. While you are signed in and playing online this happens automatically — periodically as you play, and again when you leave or close the game — so that losing or reinstalling your phone does not cost you your character. You can also back up at any moment from Settings.

If you reinstall, the game will offer to restore that backup before you start again. It only ever asks — it will not replace anything without you saying yes.

That backup goes directly from your device to Google. It does not pass through us and we cannot read it. It is covered by Google's Privacy Policy, and you can view or delete it from your Play Games account settings at any time.

If you do not want a cloud backup at all, turn off online play on the account screen, or do not sign in. Gothika: Night of the Bell keeps no cloud backup — its save stays on your device.

Other players Blackwood Forge

Blackwood Forge has guild chat, visible to the members of your guild only. There is no public chat, no direct messages and no friends list.

Anything you type in guild chat is visible to your guild and is stored on our server for up to three days. Do not put anything private in it. Guild leaders can pin a message, and a pinned message stays visible until it is unpinned.

Your display name and Battle Power are visible to other players on the arena ladder and in guild lists.

Every message has a report button. Reports are reviewed by us.

Gothika: Night of the Bell has no chat, no other players and no social features of any kind.

Notifications

Blackwood Forge If you allow notifications, the game may remind you at most twice a day that your workshop is idle. These are scheduled by your phone. They contain no personal information, and nothing is sent to us or to any push service. You can turn them off in your phone's settings at any time.

Night of the Bell The game does not send notifications.

Children

Neither game is directed at children under 13. Blackwood Forge has player-to-player chat, so we ask that children under 13 do not sign in to it. Gothika: Night of the Bell has no chat and no online features, and runs entirely offline.

Your rights and choices

• To play with nothing stored about you: In Night of the Bell there is nothing to opt out of — the game is offline. In Blackwood Forge, do not sign in; the whole single-player game works offline.
• To see what we hold (Blackwood Forge): the game shows it to you, on the account screen.
• To delete what is on our server (Blackwood Forge): use Delete my account in Settings. This erases your player record, your progress on our server, your chat messages, your reports, your blocks and your world boss damage — and it deletes your Play Games cloud backup too, so nothing of you is left to restore. It cannot be undone.
• To delete your local progress (either game): uninstall the game, or use the reset option in Settings.
• To delete only a cloud backup (Blackwood Forge), and keep your account: remove it from your Google Play Games account.

You can also email us at the address below and we will do any of the above for you.

Changes

If a game starts doing something this policy does not describe, this policy will be updated before that version ships, and the effective date above will change.

Contact

Questions about this policy: gothikagaming01@gmail.com