Last Updated: September 18, 2026
This policy covers one game: Acorn Trail, on iPhone, iPad and Android. Our other apps and this website are covered by the general Illumination Development privacy policy, which does not apply here. That policy describes accounts, email addresses, reward balances and redemption records that this game does not have, and it says our services are not intended for children — which is the opposite of what this one is for.
The short version
Acorn Trail is made for children, and it is built that way rather than merely rated that way. There is no account and no sign-in, so the game never learns who is playing. There is nothing to buy. Every level solved, badge earned and coin collected is written to storage on the device and stays there.
Nobody is tracked, and there is no way to opt in to being tracked. The game does not ask for Apple's advertising identifier and contains no code that could. It asks Google to treat every single advertising request as child-directed, caps ad content at the "G" rating, and requires every advertisement to be non-personalized — for every player, in every country, whatever anyone consents to. Its App Store privacy label carries no "Data Used to Track You" section at all.
Two things about this game do involve a network, and both are described in full below: two phones playing the same puzzle talk to each other directly over your own Wi-Fi and send nothing to us, and a level you built and chose to share is stored on our server as a grid of squares with no name on it.
What stays on the device
Everything you achieve. The game keeps these records in local storage on the phone or tablet:
- Your history of finished levels — moves taken, time, and the rest.
- Lifetime totals: levels solved, perfect runs, and the rest of the statistics screen.
- Which of the fifty levels you have solved, and your best result on each.
- Which of the ten badges you have earned.
- Your acorn coins, and which of the six meadow themes you have unlocked and chosen.
- The levels you have built yourself, including the names you gave them.
- Your settings — the sound switch.
None of it is transmitted anywhere. There is no leaderboard, no cloud save and no profile. If the device backs itself up to iCloud or to Google, that copy is governed by Apple's or Google's terms and your own backup settings, and we have no access to it.
Delete my data in Settings erases all of it permanently, clears the analytics identifiers described below, and deletes the anonymous account the game uses for telemetry. Deleting the game does the same thing to the records on the device.
What the game does send
Three things leave the device as a matter of course, and this is all of them. None is linked to a real-world identity, because the game never collects one.
An anonymous identifier
On first launch the game signs in anonymously to Google Firebase. This produces a random identifier — not a name, not an email address, not a phone number, and nothing you typed — which exists so that a player's crash reports and gameplay statistics have a stable key from one session to the next. There is no password, nothing to sign up for, and no way to use it to find out who anyone is. Delete my data deletes it.
Gameplay analytics
The game reports what happens in it to Google Analytics: a level starting and ending, the moves taken against the target, a hint used, a badge unlocked, a personal best, a level unlocked or walked past, a theme bought or chosen, which screen is open, and how long the app took to start. Alongside those, Google Analytics collects its own app-instance identifier and coarse device information such as the model, the operating system version and the app version.
No free text ever reaches analytics. Every value reported is a number or a fixed identifier such as a level number or a theme name. The names you give levels you build are not among them and never leave the device. We use this to see which levels are too hard and which are never reached, and for nothing else.
Crash and diagnostic reports
If the game crashes or hits a handled error, Google Crashlytics sends a report: the stack trace, the app version, the device model and operating system, and the anonymous identifier above. This is how bugs get found. Analytics and crash reporting are both switched off entirely in development builds.
Two phones playing together
The game can be played by two people on two devices on the same Wi-Fi network, with one animal each. That connection is directly between the two devices and does not go through us or through any server. One device offers a game and shows a short number; the other types it in. What crosses the connection is the moves being made — which animal, which direction — and nothing else. Nothing is stored at either end when the game finishes.
Because the two devices have to find each other on the local network, iOS asks for permission the first time, and the game explains why. There is no discovery by Bluetooth and no location permission is requested or needed: pairing is a typed number rather than an automatic scan, precisely so that it does not need one.
Levels you build, and levels you share
The game includes an editor for making your own boards. A level you build stays on your device until you choose to share it, and you can share it two ways.
As a code — the board itself, written out as text for you to send however you like. Nothing is uploaded, and we never see it.
As a link — which does upload it. A shared level is stored in Google Firestore as exactly seven fields and no others: the grid of squares, how many acorns its gate wants, its measured move target, the anonymous identifier above, the time it was created, a count of how many people have reported it, and whether its author has withdrawn it. The name you gave the level is not one of them. There is no title, no description, no message and nothing you can type that reaches the server.
Shared levels are unlisted, not public. A level can be opened by anybody holding its link and by nobody else: there is no gallery, no browsing, no search and no feed, and the database refuses a listing request outright rather than relying on there being no screen for one. A published board cannot be edited afterwards, so a link that was checked once cannot later point at something different. Anyone can report a level, and an author can withdraw their own.
Deleting your data removes the levels on your device. A level you have already published is not reached by that, because it carries no name and no readable author — write to privacy@illuminationdevelopment.com with the link and we will remove it.
Advertising
The game is free and carries advertising from Google AdMob and no one else. There are three placements and that is the entire inventory: a banner on the menu screens, one full-screen advertisement after every fourth level you finish, and a short video you may choose to watch in exchange for a hint. There is never an advertisement during a level, and no banner on the game screen at all.
The video is always a choice and never a wall. No level, theme, badge or feature is locked behind it; it buys one hint, capped at one per level and three a day, on a board the game has already proved can be finished without it. If AdMob has nothing to show, the banner slot shows a card for one of our own games rather than an empty space.
To serve advertisements, the Google Mobile Ads SDK contacts Google and may collect device and advertising information — device signals, coarse device and app data, and the request, impression and click itself.
Every advertisement is non-personalized
This is the part that differs from most free games, and it is deliberate. The app sets three things on every request before the first advertisement is ever asked for:
- Child-directed treatment, which tells Google the audience is children and forbids personalization.
- A maximum content rating of "G", so the creatives shown are the ones Google rates suitable for general audiences.
- Non-personalized ads, set explicitly on the request as well, so that a configuration failure cannot quietly turn personalization back on.
Google's use of the information it collects is governed by Google's own privacy policy.
Acorn coins are not money
Levels you solve pay acorn coins, and coins buy meadow themes. Coins cannot be bought, cannot be cashed out, and are not paid by watching anything. There are no in-app purchases of any kind. A theme changes how the meadow looks and changes no rule and no number in the game.
There is no tracking prompt, and that is the point
On iPhone and iPad, most free games show Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt asking for permission to track you. Acorn Trail does not, and cannot. The permission framework is not built into the app, there is no usage description for it in the app's configuration, and no code requests Apple's Identifier for Advertisers. Because it never asks, it never receives it, and there is nothing for anyone to decline.
If you go looking for this game under iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking, you will not find an entry for it. That is correct and not a fault.
In the EEA, the UK and Switzerland
Google's consent message is shown before any advertisement is requested, gathering consent for the storing of and access to information on the device as Google's EU user consent policy requires. The request is flagged as coming from a user below the age of consent for data processing, so the choices offered are the reduced set appropriate to that.
Consenting does not turn on personalized advertising here. It cannot: the child-directed setting above overrides it, and the game asks for non-personalized advertisements regardless of the answer. Your consent decision is stored on your device by Google's consent SDK, and clearing it clears with the app's data.
What the game does not do
- No account, sign-in, username, profile or email address. It never asks who you are.
- No in-app purchases, no payouts and nothing for sale.
- No contact or support form. There is no way to send us text from inside the game.
- No chat and no messaging, in either two-player mode.
- No leaderboard, no gallery and no feed. A shared level is reachable by its link alone.
- No location collection. The game does not ask for location permission.
- No access to contacts, photos, camera, microphone, health or motion data.
- No advertising identifier requested on iPhone or iPad, and no tracking prompt.
- No personalized advertising, for anyone, anywhere.
- No advertising network other than Google AdMob.
- We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, in the specific senses the CCPA and CPRA give those terms.
Children
This game is for children, and is treated as a children's app on both stores. It is rated 4+ on the App Store, and on Google Play it carries a declared target age group beginning at 6–8.
What follows from that, and is described above in full: no personal information is collected from anyone, of any age; every advertising request is flagged child-directed and capped at the "G" content rating; no advertising identifier is requested; no advertisement is ever personalized; and there is nothing in the game to buy.
The general Illumination Development policy states that our services are not intended for children under 13. That statement is about our reward apps and does not apply to this game, which is why this page exists.
We do not knowingly collect personal information from children, and the game collects no personal information from anyone. If you believe a child has somehow provided us with personal information through this game, write to privacy@illuminationdevelopment.com and we will delete it.
Your rights
Under the GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA and CPRA, and comparable laws elsewhere, you have rights to access, correct, port and delete the personal information a company holds about you. We hold no name, email address or other real-world identifier from this game, so most of those rights have nothing here to be exercised against — and you can exercise the deletion right yourself, immediately and without asking us, using Delete my data in Settings.
Two things sit outside that. Information held by Google from serving advertisements, running analytics and receiving crash reports, which is subject to Google's privacy policy and the controls described above. And anything you have sent us by email, which you can have deleted by writing to privacy@illuminationdevelopment.com.
A note about this web page
The game does not display this page — tapping Privacy Policy in Settings opens it in the device's browser, and this website, unlike the game, does use Google Analytics to see which pages people find useful. That is described in the general policy, and it applies to your visit to this page, not to your use of the game.
Changes to this policy
If any of this stops being true, this page changes before the version that changes it reaches either store, and the App Store privacy label and Google Play Data safety form change with it. Revisions are posted here with an updated date.
Contact
Email: privacy@illuminationdevelopment.com
You can also reach us through our contact and support page.