Free Social Games

[2] How Counting Works

Clusters, the drop, and a very short ladder

The terrace holds six columns and five rows, so thirty finds are laid out in front of you at once. Five or more of the same find touching along an edge, up, down, left or right, count together as one cluster and are cleared in a single go. A corner meeting is not a touch. Diagonals never join anything, which is what keeps a cluster's shape legible once the tethers are drawn over the top of it.

Clearing a cluster leaves a hole. Whatever was above it drops, new finds arrive at the top of the frame, and if the settled arrangement happens to make another cluster then that one goes too, with nothing further from you. A run of those is a chain.

Why the ladder is only five rungs

Most boards of this kind climb gently over eight or ten steps. This one has five, and they are steep: one, three, six, twelve, twenty-five. A second clear is worth having and a fourth is worth watching for. The trade is that the ladder tops out quickly, so a long run is about how wide the clusters are rather than how many rungs you can stack.

The panel, control by control

• Stake decides how many virtual credits each release spends. The two buttons walk it through five fixed values and stop dead at either end.
• Fast Sweep shortens the animation for anyone who would rather not sit through the drop.
• Release puts a fresh thirty on the terrace.
• Session Net is the gap between what has gone out and what has come back, counted for this tab and nowhere else.

Every part of it happens on your own device. Nothing is asked of a server, nothing is reported back, and a refresh wipes the lot.

[3] Virtual Credits

What the counter is, and what it is not

Two and a half thousand credits sit on the terrace when the page opens. A release spends some, a cluster returns some. That is the beginning and end of what the number does.

Virtual credits are not for sale. This site has no checkout, no cashier and no page anywhere on it that accepts a payment, and we have no plans to add one. They cannot be sold on, handed to somebody else or moved between accounts, since there are no accounts and nobody to move them to. They cannot be withdrawn, converted or redeemed against cash, goods, vouchers, tokens or entry into anything at all.

Nor are they stored. Nothing about a visit is written to your device or sent anywhere. Reload and the counter is back at two and a half thousand, which is about as plain a demonstration as we can offer that it was never a balance.

Run it down to nothing and the game quietly fills it again. There is nothing to lose here and nothing to top up.

[4] Free Social Games

What we mean by a social game

Ember Flake publishes Free Social Games, and in our case that means precisely one page with one demo game sitting on it. You arrive, and you play. Nothing asks who you are. There is no account to open, no wallet to fill, no tier held back and no later moment where a price quietly appears. The finds on the terrace are counted in virtual credits, and virtual credits cease to exist when you close the tab.

It is worth saying outright, because the shape of the thing is borrowed. Cascading grids and climbing multipliers are the vocabulary of products built to move money, and that vocabulary brings expectations with it. None of them hold here. Nothing on this page can win you money, cost you money, or be turned into money afterwards by any route you might think of.

The nearer comparison is a working model under glass. The mechanism is honest and repeats itself exactly, and the part it is a model of has been deliberately left out. The Meteor Shower set is drawn from what a counting terrace would genuinely have kept in its box, and the grid stands up to as much prodding as you feel like giving it.

[5] Questions

Questions about Free Social Games

[6] Play Safe

Playing safely

If you or someone you know needs support, help is available across Canada. Contact the Responsible Gambling Council (RGC) for prevention resources, or ConnexOntario for 24/7 free confidential support at 1-866-531-2600.

• Responsible Gambling Council for prevention and education material.
• ConnexOntario, 1-866-531-2600, free and confidential, at any hour.

No money and no stake exist anywhere in Ember Flake, so nothing here can cost you financially. It can still take an evening off you, and a game built on drops and a steep ladder is made to keep you watching for one more release. If you notice yourself going well past where you meant to stop, or reaching for something like this to take the edge off stress or a flat mood, that is worth attending to whether or not money is anywhere near it. Take breaks. Set the limit on the clock rather than on the counter.

This site is meant for adults aged 18 and over. It is not built for children and should not be handed to them as a game.

Notice for Quebec residents

Real-money online gambling in Quebec is lawfully offered only by Loto-Québec. Ember Flake is a free social casino with no real-money play and is not affiliated with Loto-Québec or with any Canadian provincial lottery corporation.

[7] Blocking Tools

Self-exclusion, and the tools that do not need our cooperation

Most sites in this area offer a self-exclusion switch that locks your account for a chosen stretch of time. There is no such switch here, for the simple reason that there is no account to lock. What we can usefully do instead is point you at the controls that work whether or not a given site plays along, and those are already sitting on your own hardware.

• Browser and network blocking. Every major browser supports extensions that block a list of sites, and most home routers and mobile operating systems carry the same ability built in. A block set at that level is not undone by clearing a cookie.
• Parental and screen-time controls. Windows, macOS, iOS and Android all ship with content filters and time limits. These are the right instrument when the worry is somebody else in the house rather than you.
• Dedicated blocking software. Tools such as GamBan and BetBlocker are built specifically to block gambling and gambling-adjacent sites across a device or a whole home network, and they cost little or nothing.

If you have already self-excluded from real-money gambling, or you are partway through a programme with a support service, adding free social games to the same list is a sensible precaution. The absence of money does not reliably mean the absence of a trigger, and every tool above will treat this site exactly as it treats any other.

[8] Who We Are

About Ember Flake

Ember Flake is operated by Ember Flake Ltd. and publishes exactly one thing: a free social demo game on a meteor-counting theme, together with the legal and safety material that belongs alongside it.

We are not a gambling operator, not an affiliate of one, and not a comparison or review site. We hold no gaming licence, because nothing we publish requires one, and we are not affiliated with any lottery corporation or real-money gaming brand. Ember Flake publishes free social games only.

Questions about this site, or about how it handles data, can go to privacy@emberflake.com, which reaches the people responsible for it.

[9] Privacy and Cookies

Privacy Policy

We handle personal information in accordance with the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy statutes. Under PIPEDA, you have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of your personal data, and to lodge a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).

What we collect

Nothing that identifies you. There is no registration, no form and no input field anywhere on this site asking for personal information. We do not collect your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, date of birth or payment details, because nothing on the site would have any use for them.

Game data

Your stake, your credit counter and your session totals sit in your browser's memory for as long as the tab stays open. They are never transmitted to us and never written to your device. Closing or refreshing the page discards all of it.

Cookies

This site sets no cookies. It uses no local storage, no session storage and nothing comparable, and it loads no third-party scripts, fonts, analytics or advertising tags that could set one on our behalf. There is no consent banner because there is nothing to consent to. Your browser may still hold its ordinary cache of the page files, which is outside our control and contains nothing about you.

Server logs

Our hosting provider records standard web server request logs, which can include an IP address, a timestamp and a browser user agent string. They exist to keep the site running and secure, are not tied to any identity, and are never used to build a profile or shared for advertising.

Your rights

Since we hold no personal information about you, there is generally nothing to access, correct or delete. If you believe otherwise, write to privacy@emberflake.com and we will respond.

[10] Terms of Use

Terms and Conditions

Acceptance

By using Ember Flake you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, please do not use the site. We may revise them from time to time, and continued use after a revision means you accept the revised version.

Eligibility and age

This site is intended for adults aged 18 and over. By using it you confirm that you meet that age requirement and that playing a free social game is lawful where you live.

Acceptable use

Use the site as it is presented. Do not interfere with it, probe it for vulnerabilities, script or automate play, reverse engineer it for republication, or use it in any way that misleads somebody about what it is. Do not present it to a person under 18.

Virtual credits and no cash value

Virtual credits are a display feature of a demo game. They are not money, not a deposit, not a stored balance and not property. They cannot be purchased, sold, transferred, withdrawn, redeemed or exchanged for anything of value, and they hold no value outside this page. We may change how they behave, or remove them altogether, at any time and without notice.

Intellectual property

The design, artwork, text and code of this site belong to Ember Flake Ltd. or are used with permission. You may view and play the site; you may not copy, republish or redistribute its content without our written permission.

Limitation of liability

The site is provided as it is, without warranties of any kind. We do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from the use of, or the inability to use, this site. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

Modifications and availability

We may change, suspend or withdraw the site or any part of it at any time and without notice, and we are under no obligation to keep it available.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Canada and of the province in which the operator is established, and the courts of that jurisdiction have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute.