Privacy policy

Updated 30 October 2026. Applies to Anti-Horizon version 7.8.1 at anti-horizon.onrender.com and to downloaded copies.

Information stored on your device

The game uses your browser's local storage under the key accretion.v1. This is browser storage, not a tracking cookie. It contains:

• Your selected mode/save slot and each slot's saved universe, progress, upgrades, resources and checkpoints.
• Companions, optional nicknames, incubating eggs, achievements and personal records.
• Gameplay statistics such as time played, objects captured and highest mass reached.
• Audio, display, movement and difficulty settings.
• Galaxy visits, estimated depletion, plotted course and last-observed rival positions.
• Companion evolution experience and branch choices, composition and stellar weather state.
• Earned appearance choices, prestige ranks and retired-journey history, optional expedition promises and orbital blueprint goals.
• Saved impact marks on bodies and their orientation.
• Final-horizon position, discovery, closest approach, photos counted, merger progress and local rendering preferences.
• The latest recorded encounter, with a bounded set of nearby-body positions.
• Separate sandbox, boss and salvage scenario profiles.
• Four custom signals, their optional local image/GIF data, text and shape choices.

These details let the game restore a journey and apply your preferences. Nicknames are optional and appear locally.

Your account and sign-in

What you give us. Your email address, and optionally a pilot name. If you continue with Google, a Google window run through our Firebase project confirms your account and gives the game a signed token; we sign you out of Firebase straight away and keep only our own session. Our sign-in service checks it with Google and reads your name, given name, email address, profile picture address and Google account number from it. The token itself is not kept.

Verification codes. Every sign-up and sign-in, by email or Google, is confirmed with a six-digit code that we email to you. The code is valid for 10 minutes and allows five attempts. The service holds only a keyed hash of it, in memory, and forgets it once it is used or expires. Codes are sent from our Gmail account through Google (or through Brevo or Resend if we change provider), which receives your email address and the message in order to send it. To limit abuse, the service also counts recent code requests per email address and per network address, in memory, for up to one hour.

Staying signed in. After you enter the right code you receive a signed session that lasts 30 days. It is kept in this browser's local storage under the key accretion.session together with your name, email address and picture address, so the title screen can greet you. The sign-in service does not store accounts in a database; restarting it does not delete anything you saved. Showing your Google picture loads it from Google.

Google Drive saves. If you signed in with Google and choose Save to Google Drive, the game asks Google for permission to use a hidden app-data folder in your Drive (scope drive.appdata). This folder is visible only to this game; it cannot see your other Drive files. It stores one file, accretion-saves.json, holding the same data as an exported backup. Load from Google Drive reads that file back through the same checks as importing a backup. Drive access lasts about an hour and is held only in memory.

Sign out removes the session and profile from this browser and withdraws the game's Drive access for this session. To delete the Drive copy, open Google Drive's settings, choose Manage apps, and delete this app's hidden data. You can remove the game's access to your Google Account from its third-party connections page. Google's own processing of your sign-in is covered by Google's privacy policy.

Collection, sharing and network access

Solo modes do not transmit storage. Their leaderboards contain simulated rivals. Multiplayer sends your pilot name, room code, control inputs, purchases, messages and the hat and shades you wear to the arena server, and other pilots in the arena see your name and cosmetics. Quick play and the five arenas use our arena at anti-horizon-arena.onrender.com, which also checks your signed-in session token to confirm you have an account; it keeps rooms in memory only and stores nothing when you leave. Instead it hands your browser a signed save of your arena progress (your mass, adaptations and tallies, tied to a coded form of your account, never the address itself), kept under anti-horizon.arena-save and sent back when you join so you carry on where you were. Clearing this site’s data removes it. The game’s owner can see which pilots are in each arena (their pilot names and that coded account id, never an email address), remove them and bar an account from the arenas and the leaderboards. If you connect to your own server instead, that server receives the same data. Signals you send can include your selected local image or GIF and are relayed to other pilots in that room. The server and room participants receive those messages; other players’ media is hidden by default. Your browser also exposes connection metadata, including its network address, to the host. The supplied server keeps rooms and chat in memory, without a database or gameplay log. A different host or network proxy may retain its own logs. Consult that host before connecting. Campaign saves, companion collections and local achievements are not uploaded. There are no analytics, tracking pixels or automatic update requests. The only cloud save is the optional Google Drive copy described above.

All game scripts, images, styles and sounds come from this website or are generated on your device; the only third-party scripts are Google's sign-in libraries (Firebase Authentication from gstatic.com), loaded only when you choose Continue with Google, and Cloudflare Turnstile (from challenges.cloudflare.com), loaded only on the sign-in screen and the contact page. Turnstile checks that a real person, not a bot, is asking for a sign-in code or sending a message; Cloudflare receives technical signals from your browser to decide that, under its Turnstile privacy policy, and does not use them for advertising. The Sources page contains external reference links. They are opened only when you select them; the destination website then handles that visit under its own policies. The website and sign-in service are hosted by Render, whose servers record standard request logs such as network addresses and times.

Leaderboards

When you are signed in, the game posts your journeys to the leaderboards: your pilot name, the largest mass a journey reached, its flight time, the time it took to become a black hole, and, for today’s universe, that day’s date and seed. They are stored under a keyed code made from your email address, never the address itself, in a small database run by our sign-in service on Cloudflare. Weekly boards are deleted after 15 days and daily boards after 3. Anyone can see the names and scores on a board. Guests never post anything. To keep your name off the boards, play as a guest or change your pilot name.

Installing on a phone

In the phone layout on a touch screen, the game offers to install itself as an app. It then adds a web app manifest and a service worker, which keeps copies of the game’s own files (pages, scripts, styles and icons) in your browser so it opens quickly and without a connection. Nothing about you is in those copies, and nothing is sent anywhere. Uninstalling the app or clearing this site’s data removes them. If you dismiss the install card, a note that you did is kept under anti-horizon.install-dismissed.

Coins and cosmetics

Coins you catch in the arenas and the hats and shades you buy with them are kept in this browser under anti-horizon.wallet. The arena only tells your browser when you catch a coin; it keeps no wallet of its own. Clearing this site’s data removes them.

Daily challenges

Today’s challenges, which ones you have met and your day streak are kept in this browser under anti-horizon.daily. They are never sent anywhere.

Photo exports

Photo mode creates a PNG locally and offers it as a browser download. The game does not upload the image or retain a copy in save data. Manage exported images in your browser downloads or file manager.

Private developer comparison

The optional rendering lab reads an image that you select from your device using FileReader. The image stays in that page memory. It is not uploaded, written to local storage, or included in the lab PNG export. Closing the page clears it. Diagnostic pages use an isolated in-memory save.

Age check and children

Once, right after you create an account, the game asks for your month and year of birth and for your agreement to these terms and this policy. The sign-in service works out whether you are 13 or over and keeps only that outcome, filed under the same coded form of your account as the leaderboards. It never stores your birthday. For a player under 13 it keeps the month in which the account turns 13 plus one, so the limits lift by themselves; the first answer stands and cannot be changed later. The outcome is also written into your signed session.

Players under 13 can sign in, save and play every solo mode. They cannot join the online arenas (so they cannot send or receive signals or chat there) or post to the leaderboards, so their pilot name is never shown to other players. The arena server and the leaderboards check this on the server, not just in the page. We do not knowingly collect more than an email address and an optional pilot name from anyone under 13. If you are a parent or guardian and want your child’s account details removed, use our contact form.

Coin gifts from the owner

The game’s owner can give coins to a player. A player online in an arena receives them at once. Otherwise the gift waits on the sign-in service, filed under the coded form of the account with nothing else, until that player next opens the game signed in; collecting it deletes the gift.

Cookies and similar storage

Anti-Horizon sets no cookies and uses no tracking, analytics or advertising storage, so there is no cookie banner: everything below is needed for a feature you use, and stays in your browser unless a section above says otherwise.

• accretion.v1: your save slots, sandbox and scenario profiles, companions and settings. Kept until you clear it.
• accretion.session, and a copy in the IndexedDB database accretion-auth: your signed-in session with your name, email address, picture address and age outcome. Lasts 30 days or until you sign out.
• accretion.auth-pending, accretion.google-redirect, accretion.google-oauth: a sign-in in progress, so it survives Google opening in the same window. Removed when it finishes, and ignored after 15 minutes.
• firebaseLocalStorageDb (IndexedDB): written by Google’s Firebase library only while you use Continue with Google; the game signs out of Firebase straight away.
• anti-horizon.arena-save: your signed arena progress. anti-horizon.wallet: coins and cosmetics. anti-horizon.daily: daily challenges and streak.
• anti-horizon.first-steps: how far you are through the first-steps guide. anti-horizon.phone-instruments: which panels you show in the phone layout.
• anti-horizon.install-dismissed, anti-horizon.xbox-install-dismissed: that you closed an install card.
• Owner only: anti-horizon.owner-pass and anti-horizon.owner-auto (this tab only) and anti-horizon.owner-touched (journeys kept off the leaderboards).
• If you install the game as an app, a service worker cache of the game’s own files.
• On the sign-in screen and the contact page, Cloudflare Turnstile may keep its own short-lived data in your browser for the security check.

You can delete all of it by clearing this site’s data in your browser settings.

Retention, correction and deletion

Saved data remains until you remove it or your browser clears it. A browser may also remove storage in private mode, when storage limits are reached or when you clear browsing data. Apart from the optional Google Drive copy there is no remote backup. Your account is simply your email address, so signing in again on any device works; saved games do not follow you unless you use Drive or export a backup.

You can correct a companion nickname in Life Lab and change preferences in Settings. To remove all saved data, close every Anti-Horizon tab and clear the corresponding local/site storage through your browser's settings or storage tools. This deletes all three journey slots, the sandbox and scenario profiles, custom signals, replays, companion collections and settings. There is no undo inside the game.

Local file storage behavior differs between browsers. Moving or renaming the game folder, changing browser profiles, or later opening a hosted version may show a different storage area. Keep the same browser and folder when updating if you want to retain existing saves.

Access on shared devices

Anyone with access to the same browser profile may be able to view or alter its game data. Companion names and local saves are not encrypted by this application. Use a separate browser profile if you share a device.

Who runs Anti-Horizon and how to reach us

Anti-Horizon is made and run by AK, an independent developer in Australia, and hosted on Cloudflare (a United States company). Contact: our contact form. We do not publish an email address. A message you send with the form is emailed to our private inbox and kept only there; a reply address, if you give one, is used only to answer you, and the sign-in service counts recent messages per network address in memory for an hour to stop spam.

Use the contact form to ask what we hold about you, to correct it, or to delete it: your leaderboard entries, age-check outcome, any waiting coin gift and any ban, all of which are filed under the coded form of your account. We reply within 30 days. Saves in your browser and your Google Drive copy are under your control and are deleted as described above.

We collect only what the game needs to work: an email address to confirm it is you, an optional pilot name, your age outcome, and the gameplay data described here. We do not sell or share personal information, and we use it only to run the game. We aim to follow the Australian Privacy Principles. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Custom signals can be edited or removed in the signal editor. Use only media you intend to share when sending multiplayer messages. The access key is kept in the connection form, not saved into the game vault.

The actual storage implementation is available in save.js and life.js. Relevant browser documentation and policy references are listed on the Sources page.