Privacy Policy
NOCTULE · effective 19 August 2026
NOCTULE is a game made by Chan, an individual developer trading as Bendigo Games. This
policy covers the NOCTULE mobile app for iOS and Android
(com.chan.games.noctule).
The short version
NOCTULE asks you for nothing. No email address, no account, no advertising, no analytics, no tracking of any kind.
There is one thing it sends, and only if you choose to send it: if you put a score on the global leaderboard, the short name you typed, that score and the time you set it are published to everyone who opens the board.
That is the whole of it, and the rest of this page explains it in detail — because “we collect nothing” is the sort of claim that deserves specifics, and because there is one exception it would be dishonest to gloss.
At a glance
| What | Leaves your device? | Visible to others? | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| The short name you type | Only if you submit a score | Yes — publicly | To label your row on the board |
| Your distance and the time you set it | Only if you submit a score | Yes — publicly | To rank the board |
| An anonymous identifier | Yes, with a submission or a report | No | To tell one submitting app from another |
| Your settings and your local best runs | No | No | So closing the app does not lose them |
| Contact details, location, contacts, photos, audio, advertising IDs, analytics, crash reports | Never collected at all. | ||
Information the app collects
None, in the sense that matters: NOCTULE never asks for your email address or any other personal detail. It does not read your contacts, your photos, your location, your calendar, or your files, and it does not record audio. It does not create an account for you in any sense you would recognise as one — you are never asked for a password and there is nothing to log into.
One honest footnote on the audio, because the evidence is public and looks like a contradiction: the iOS app declares a microphone purpose string. Apple requires one from any app whose binary references the microphone APIs, whether or not it ever calls them, and the sound engine NOCTULE uses ships with recording support built in. The game never uses it, the permission prompt can never appear, and nothing in the app is able to start a recording.
You may type a short name — three to eight characters, letters and digits only — to label your scores. You invent that name. Do not use your real name, and the app has no way of knowing whether you did.
Information the app sends anywhere
Only what you put on the leaderboard, and only when you put it there.
When a run makes the global top 100 and you submit it, three things are published:
- the short name you typed,
- the distance you flew, as a whole number,
- the time you finished the run.
They are published to a Google Firestore database and are visible to everyone who opens the board inside the game. Assume anything you put in the name field is public and permanent.
Alongside them, the app holds an anonymous identifier issued by Firebase Authentication. It is a random string. It is not linked to your email address, your phone, your device, an advertising ID, or anything about you — the app never asks for any of those and could not link them if it wanted to. Its only jobs are to let the server tell one submitting app from another, and to let you flag a name for review without that report being anonymous to the point of uselessness. It is not written into the leaderboard, so no other player can see it.
Nothing else leaves your device. Not your settings, not the runs that did not make the board, not how long you played, not a crash report — the app sends no telemetry of any kind, and there is no analytics library in it to send any.
If the leaderboard is not switched on in your build
Some builds of NOCTULE are compiled with no leaderboard server configured at all. In those builds the board is a private list on your own phone, no network connection of any kind is made, and the game works identically in aeroplane mode. You can tell which one you have: open the leaderboard, and the line under the title says LOCAL BOARD - THIS DEVICE ONLY.
Names other people can see, and what to do about one
A leaderboard shows names typed by strangers. NOCTULE filters them in three places — as you type, on the server before a name is stored, and again when the board is drawn — and no filter catches everything.
Hold your finger on any row of the global board to report it. That sends the row and nothing else; there is no free-text box, deliberately. A person reads the reports and removes names that should go. The score keeps its place — it is the name that is at issue, not the run.
Removing your data
Ask, and it goes. Email support@bendigogames.com with the name and the score, and the row will be deleted from the board. There is no automated deletion flow because there is no account to log into and nothing that could authenticate a request — which cuts both ways, honestly: it also means anyone could ask for a row’s removal, and the worst that a bad-faith request can achieve is the deletion of a score.
Deleting the app removes everything stored on your phone, including the local board and the anonymous identifier. It does not remove a row you already published, because that row is on a server rather than on your phone; ask, per the paragraph above.
Information the app stores on your device
The game saves your progress so that closing the app does not lose your scores. Stored on your phone, and only on your phone:
- your best runs, as a distance and a date,
- the short name you chose,
- your settings — sound, wall thickness, and the colour options.
This is kept in your device’s standard private app storage, inside the app’s own sandbox, where other apps cannot read it. It never leaves the device.
Advertising, analytics, and tracking
There are none. NOCTULE contains no advertising, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no tracking of any kind. It does not read your advertising identifier and it does not track you across apps or websites.
The app has three third-party software components and none of them is an advertising or analytics library: one plays sound, one asks the operating system for permission to play it, and one saves your settings to your own device. The leaderboard uses no library at all — it speaks to Google’s servers directly over ordinary web requests. Nothing here profiles you, and nothing here follows you to another app.
If advertising is ever added to a future version, this policy will be updated before that version is released, and the app stores will show the change on the app’s listing.
Third parties
One: Google. The leaderboard is stored in Google Firestore and its anonymous identifiers are issued by Google Firebase Authentication, so a score you publish and the identifier attached to your installation are processed by Google as the developer’s service provider, under Google’s own privacy policy at policies.google.com/privacy. Google is given nothing else, and nothing is shared with anyone else at all — no advertisers, no analytics companies, no data brokers.
In a build with no leaderboard server configured, not even that happens; see the section above on how to tell which one you have.
The app stores themselves — the Apple App Store and Google Play — may collect information about downloads under their own policies. That is between you and them; the developer of NOCTULE receives no personal information from either.
Children
NOCTULE has no advertising, no in-app purchases, no chat, no friend list, and no way for players to send each other anything. It asks nobody, of any age, for personal information.
It does have a leaderboard, and a leaderboard is a public place. A player types a short name and every other player can see it. That is user-generated content, and it is why NOCTULE is not directed to children and is not enrolled in Google Play’s Families programme: it is rated for a general audience, declares that users interact and that user content is shared, and the name field carries the same advice it gives everyone — invent a name, do not use a real one.
Nothing about a child is collected, because nothing about anybody is collected. If a name on the board looks like a real child’s name, or anything else that should not be there, hold the row to report it or email the address below, and it will be removed.
Your rights
Data-protection laws such as the GDPR, the CCPA and the Australian Privacy Act give you rights over personal data held about you. The only data NOCTULE holds that could be connected to you is a leaderboard row you chose to publish and the anonymous identifier attached to your installation. To have a row removed, or to ask what is held, email the address below and it will be handled by a person. There is nothing else to access, correct, or delete.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new effective date, before the version of the app it describes is released.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about privacy in the app, can be sent to support@bendigogames.com. It reaches a person.
Last updated: 19 August 2026