The gesture
One press. Every ball it reaches, shoved.
Beach balls float on open water, each showing a power of two, and two of a kind merge into the next one up, as in 2048. The difference is that you never touch a ball: everything you do to them, you do through the surface they are sitting on.
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1
Press and hold
A ripple charges under your finger. The longer you hold it, the further it will reach and the harder it will shove.
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2
Read the ring
A thin ring shows exactly how far the wave will carry, and every ball it would catch lights up, brighter the harder it is about to be hit. That is what makes the shot a decision rather than a guess.
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3
Let go
The wavefront travels out at a fixed speed, pushing each ball as it arrives and falling off with distance. Two balls of the same number that collide merge into one of double the value and keep their momentum, so a single well-placed press can set off a chain.
A flick picks off a neighbouring pair. A full hold sweeps about half the board. Either one costs you exactly one move.
The chart
A voyage, and the water either side of it.
Ella the Otter sails it one island at a time, from sunny coves out past volcanoes, icebergs and jungle, picking up stranded friends from the rafts on the way.
The sea gets busier slowly, and it slows down as it goes: a new piece every three boards through the opening coast, every seven by the far end of the chart. Meet it, practise it, then be asked a question with it. The first turning is twenty-nine islands in, one board before the free chart ends, so nobody reaches the end of it without seeing that this voyage has somewhere else to go.
The water
Mines, whirlpools, crocodiles, a kraken, a lighthouse, and a beaver with a plan.
Every stretch of the voyage introduces one thing and then argues with you about it, all the way out to two hundred and thirty. Kelp that brakes and currents that carry; fog and night water that take the board away rather than filling it; crab pots that open to a bank shot and nothing else; a beaver walling off the sea while you play.
Some boards ask you to build a number and keep it on the water instead of counting your presses. Those have no move budget at all, because a vampire squid is already on her way up from the far corner, and she wants the one ball you have just finished making.
The forks
Nine places the chart offers you somewhere else to be.
A route leaves the voyage at a signpost and runs ten boards to a boss. Seven of the nine float something other than a beach ball (paper, coconuts, glass net floats, bubbles, mooring buoys, coins, spirit lamps), which is paint rather than rules: nothing about how a board plays changes. None of them is on the way to anywhere, either. The voyage never needs a route to keep going, and the first one is free to sail.
The whale road
Something enormous is going the same way you are.
The wreck line
Every hull down here was going somewhere once.
The folded sea
Somebody folded this water out of paper, and the creases are still in it.
The mangrove maze
Green water, and no straight line through any of it.
The kelp cathedral
The water stands up here, and the light comes down in columns.
The harbour works
Somebody built this water, and it opens and shuts on their schedule.
The pirate run
Somebody has been taking things that float.
The ice route
Cold water, and everything that lives in it.
The ghost lagoon
Everything is where it looks. Not everything is there.
All Hallows
Somebody hollowed these out and set them floating. Something came to look.
All Hallows opens on the first of October for everybody, whatever they have cleared, and it is gone again after the season. Its signpost stands at island twenty-six, but an anchor only says where a sign is drawn: here the date is what opens the route. The stars it holds leave the chart’s total with it, so a March player is never shown a ceiling they cannot fill. It floats pumpkins.
The App Clip
Five islands, from a link, with nothing to install.
Not a demo build and not a mode. It is the same game with the chart set to five islands: the same boards, the same water, the same arithmetic.
No install
Tap the link and the first five islands open. Nothing lands on the home screen unless you ask for it.
Nothing for sale
An App Clip cannot sell anything and this one does not try. At the end of the fifth island it offers the app, on Apple’s own install sheet, and that is the whole of it.
The stars come with you
The clip and the app write the same save. Install afterwards and the five boards you cleared are already cleared.
What it costs
Thirty islands free, one purchase, and no hurry either way.
Nothing in the shop is the only way to get something. Islands arrive on their own, a day at a time, and a player who never spends anything still reaches the last one; routes are ten boards off a voyage that never needs them; every tool the shop sells is also handed out for playing well. What is on sale is the wait, not the water.
Legal
Privacy Policy
There is no account to make, no analytics, no advertising, and no third-party code of any kind in the app. Ripple contains no networking code of its own: it cannot send your information anywhere, because it has no way to send anything anywhere.
01 Information we collect
None. We do not collect, store, transmit, sell, or share any personal information about you. We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number, date of birth, or location, and the app has no field in which you could give them to us.
We have no server, no database, and no analytics provider. Nothing about your use of Ripple reaches us.
02 Information stored on your device
Ripple saves your progress locally on your iPhone, using the standard storage iOS provides to apps. This information never leaves your device and is not visible to us. It consists of:
- which islands you have cleared, and how many stars each earned;
- which detours you have finished and which friends you have found;
- your power-up inventory and which tutorial cards you have seen;
- your sound and settings preferences;
- how many boards you had cleared when the rating sheet was last asked for, so that it is not asked for again too soon;
- a record of which purchases you have made, so the app knows what to unlock.
That save is written to a shared container on your device (an App Group) so that the App Clip and the installed app are one save rather than two: five islands played from a link are still cleared after you install. The container has exactly two members, the app and its own clip, and there is no other app of ours that could read it. It is still local storage on your iPhone, and it still reaches nobody.
03 Purchases
Ripple offers optional in-app purchases. These are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store using StoreKit, Apple’s own purchasing system. Apple processes the transaction and tells the app only whether a given item has been bought.
We never see or receive your payment card details, billing address, Apple Account credentials, or any other personal information connected to the purchase. Apple’s handling of that transaction is governed by Apple’s Privacy Policy, not by this one.
Confirming a purchase, and restoring purchases you have already made, is the only occasion on which the app asks the network for anything, and it asks only Apple.
The App Clip sells nothing at all. It shows Apple’s install sheet at the end of the fifth island, and that sheet is drawn and handled by iOS.
04 The rating prompt
After a board is cleared with three stars, Ripple may ask iOS to show Apple’s own rating sheet (the standard one, with the stars on it). Never before a dozen boards are behind you, and never again within a hundred of the last ask. iOS may decline to show it at all, which is Apple’s decision rather than ours.
The sheet is drawn and handled by iOS. Ripple does not see what you tap, is not told whether you rated it, and receives nothing back. A rating you leave goes to your App Store listing the same way any other does. You can turn the prompt off for every app in Settings → App Store → In-App Ratings & Reviews.
05 No tracking, no advertising, no analytics
Ripple contains no advertising, no analytics or crash-reporting service, and no third-party software development kits. It does not use the Advertising Identifier (IDFA), does not track you across other apps or websites, and will never show you the App Tracking Transparency prompt, because there is nothing to ask you about.
06 Permissions we do not request
Ripple asks for no system permissions at all. It does not request or access your location, contacts, calendar, photos, camera, microphone, health data, or files.
07 Children
Ripple is suitable for all ages and collects no personal information from anyone, children included. Because nothing is collected from any user, there is no children’s data for us to hold, disclose, or delete. Parents who wish to prevent in-app purchases can do so using Screen Time on the device.
08 Deleting your information
Because we hold nothing, there is nothing for us to delete on request. Everything Ripple has saved lives on your device: deleting the app removes all of it permanently. You can also clear your progress at any time from Settings → Reset Progress inside the game.
09 App Store privacy label
Ripple’s App Store listing declares the following, which matches this policy exactly:
10 Changes to this policy
If a future version of Ripple ever changes what it collects, this policy will be updated before that version is released, and the effective date above will change with it. Since the app collects nothing today, any such change would be a substantial one, and it would be described plainly here rather than buried.
11 Contact
Questions about this policy, or about Ripple generally, can go to jasonlimberis@gmail.com.