Neverstill

The game

Twelve waves to the end of the line. Fly above a moving train. Overcharge the car you are standing over, stomp the boarders off the deck, and pull the scrap in before it falls behind. You cannot be in two places at once. That is the game.

Between waves the train pulls into a station. The shop is not a menu. Goods stand on plinths, a board shows the price of a repair, and a lever marked DEPART sends you back out. Buy a car. Bolt a module to it. Then choose: spread three of a kind in a row for the battery bonus, or fuse them into one stronger car that takes up less of the train. Breadth or depth. The train is only so long.

What it costs

The whole game is free. All twelve waves, every car, every module, and the depot that banks what a failed run earned.

Then there is paint. Twenty-eight liveries for the train: one fitted as standard, five earned on the line, three with the Line Pass, and nineteen sold one at a time in the paint shop. Each is a one-time purchase and restores like the pass. Paint only. A livery changes how the train looks and nothing about how it fights.

The hoardings

The free game is paid for by the line's own advertising. There are hoardings along the track, vinyl under the canopies, and two vehicles that come past carrying a board: a hawker drone that flies the length of the train, and a wheeled runner that paces it.

Nearly all of it is scenery. It is built from the same parts as the station, lit by the same light, and it scrolls past with everything else. None of it blocks a shot. None of it has to be dismissed. None of it stops the game. The two vehicles are the exception, because they sometimes carry a real offer instead of an invented one. That is the next section.

Every advertiser on these boards is invented for this world. Nothing is fetched to draw one, and no identifier leaves your device for one. The Line Pass clears them and puts the line's own notices back up instead: mileposts, gradients, standing orders. A station with blank frames looks broken. A station with mileposts looks like a railway.

The pitches

There are three real adverts, and every one of them has to be pressed. A board stands on the platform at every stop. Out on the line, a wheeled runner and a hawker drone each come past carrying one.

Pressing one does not start a video. It stops the game and shows you what the advert pays, with NOT NOW beside it. Only if you then choose to watch does a video from Google AdMob play, and the sponsor pays you in scrap.

That is all of it. No banner, no interstitial, nothing that starts on its own, and nothing that plays until you have said yes twice. The ads are non-personalised, so they are not chosen from a profile of you. The Line Pass clears all three.

The one question we ask

We advertise this game on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. Shortly after you first open it, iOS asks whether Neverstill may tell them you arrived.

That is all the prompt is for: an install, a launch, a return the next day, a purchase. No score, no run, no session. Nothing about how you play is ever sent to an advertiser, and neither company shows you anything.

Say no and no advertising identifier is handed over at all. For TikTok, iOS goes further and blocks the app from reaching them. The game is the same either way, and you can change your answer at any time in Settings. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is sent.

How it behaves

• No account and no sign-in.
• The game's own server knows your device only by a random number the game makes up. It keeps what happens in your runs and your weekly league score, so the league and the season work and so we can see which parts of the game bring people back. No advertiser sees any of it. One switch in settings, Online, stops it and deletes what it holds.
• Nothing is tracked unless you allowed it at the prompt. iOS enforces that, not our good intentions.
• Plays offline. Without a connection the league waits and everything else plays the same.
• Your progress is stored on your device.