Fair play, records and copied games
Quiltoku keeps your progress on your own device, so it can only ever be as honest as the person playing. This page explains, plainly, what that means for records and comparisons, what the game does to keep friendly competition fair, and what it deliberately does not do.
Your game is yours
There is no account to protect and no server deciding what you solved. Your streak, levels and stars live on your device, and a game code is a copy of them that you can move or back up. We chose this on purpose: it keeps the game private and simple, and it means a single-player puzzle never needs to treat you like a suspect.
What a game code can and cannot do
- Loading adds, never replaces. A code is merged into your game, taking the better value of each record. It cannot erase what you have.
- Every field is checked. The game rebuilds each value from the code and rejects anything out of range, so a damaged or hostile code cannot inject anything, and nicknames are shown only as plain text.
- You can undo. Undo the last load puts your game back exactly as it was.
- It cannot reach your online identity. A game code never contains your sync link, so it cannot give anyone access to your devices or your groups.
Recognising a copy of the same game
Each game has a random identifier, a string of letters and numbers with no meaning, kept on your device and included in game codes. When you load a code, the game compares identifiers. If they match, you are loading a copy of your own game and the game says that nothing in it is new, so your own records do not look like someone else's. If they differ, the game tells you the code comes from a different game and that its records are simply added to yours. The identifier is not used for tracking, and it is not an account. It is only a way for the game to avoid confusing you with yourself.
Where fairness matters: groups and, later, leaderboards
When other people see your numbers, as in a friends group, the game is more careful:
- Daily times count only for the day's puzzle solved on its own day, and the server keeps the first time sent.
- The weekly climb is measured from this device's own starting point each Monday and capped, so loading a finished game does not produce a week of climbing.
- Streaks count only days solved on their own day.
The level reached is reported by the player's own game, so it is the least checkable number in a group. It is shown as a label of where someone is up to, and groups are small circles of friends rather than public rankings.
If Quiltoku ever offers a public leaderboard, it will not rest on reported levels or loaded games. It would rank things earned on the device during the period being measured, add sanity limits such as the fastest plausible time for a puzzle, and make joining it a separate choice.
What we do not do
We do not try to catch cheaters by watching you, and we do not lock a game code with a password that could be bypassed in the page's own code. A bot that plays the real game cannot be told from a person, and a lock that lives in the player's browser is not a real lock. We would rather be honest about that than promise something we cannot deliver. The goal is friendly play among friends, and the game's records are meant to be your own.