Glowtether

How to play

Your firefly circles a lit lantern. Tap once to let go, and it flies in the direction it was heading. Land on the next lantern to light it; the forest brightens as you climb.

That is the whole game. There is nothing else to learn, and no tutorial to sit through — the early Challenges teach each idea by asking for it.

Common questions

Where is my progress saved?

On your device. There is no account and nothing to sign in to, and the game never uploads your save. Deleting the app removes it — though iOS may have included it in your own device backup, so restoring a backup can bring it back. We hold no copy either way.

I only get one shot at the Daily?

You can replay the Daily as often as you like — but the first run you finish is the one that stands, whether you light the last lantern or fall short. The rule is on the Daily card before your first tap, so it is never a surprise.

The Daily's date doesn't match my phone's date.

The Daily turns over at midnight UTC, so that everyone in the world plays the same course on the same day. Depending on where you are that can land in the middle of your afternoon or evening, and the date printed on the card is the UTC one. The countdown on the card always tells you how long the current course has left.

A course I could play is locked again.

New courses are sometimes added part-way up the ladder, which puts them in front of the ones above. A course you had already finished stays open — its record and its stars are stored against the course itself rather than its position, so nothing moves. A course you had reached but not yet finished waits behind the new one until you clear it.

The motion makes me uncomfortable.

Turn on Reduce Motion in the game's settings. Screen shake, pulses and reveals switch off, while everything you need to read stays put.

Can I turn off sound or vibration?

Yes — Sound and Haptics are separate switches in settings, so you can keep one without the other. Sound covers the music and the effects together; there is no separate music switch.

Does it need the internet?

No. The game does not require an internet connection to play, including the Daily. It has no account, no server and nothing to sign in to.

Accessibility

What is in the game today, and — because it matters more — what is not yet:

• Reduce Motion — its own switch in the game's settings, which is where to set it; it is not inherited from iOS. Screen shake, pulses and reveals switch off, while everything you need to read stays put.
• Colour — the lit and unlit lanterns are told apart by brightness rather than hue, and every contrast that carries meaning is measured under simulated protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia and achromatopsia as well as typical vision. The firefly colours in the Collection are the honest exception: several are genuinely hard to tell apart with colour-vision deficiency, so each one is also named in text and flashes to its own rhythm.
• Larger text — not yet selectable. The game draws at the standard size on every device today: it cannot read the text size you set in iOS, and has no setting of its own. The layouts themselves are already built and tested from 82% up to 194% of standard, so nothing overlaps or falls off screen once the control exists. That control is the next accessibility job.
• VoiceOver — implemented, not yet verified on a phone. Every screen carries a spoken label and a deliberate reading order, but we have not been able to confirm on a real iPhone that VoiceOver actually reads them, and we would rather say so than let you find out. If you use VoiceOver, we would genuinely like to hear from you.

If one of these is what stands between you and the game, please write — it moves up the list.

Privacy, briefly

Glowtether collects nothing. No account, no analytics, no advertising, no network requests of any kind. The full statement is on the privacy page.