Gold Rush! Down the Line — Support

Gold Rush! Down the Line is a turn-based mining puzzle under Singapore’s MRT stations. Everything you do stays on your device — so most questions have short answers, and anything else reaches a person directly.

Contact

Email hearthlightstudio2@gmail.com and you’ll hear back from the developer. Please mention your device, the station you were playing, and what you were doing when the problem appeared.

Common questions

• How do I play? Tap a cell to walk or dig toward it, or hold the virtual joystick to walk and dig continuously. Every swing and every step costs stamina, which does not come back during a run. Fill your pouch, get back to base and tap Extract to bank the gold. If stamina reaches zero away from base, the pouch is lost. The first stations on the East–West line teach each hazard one at a time.
• I ran out of stamina far from base. That is the game: the pouch is lost unless you salvage it. Every mine is the same every time, so the next attempt can plan around what you learned. Anything you discovered — nuggets, relics — stays in your Field Notes.
• What do the pickaxes on a station mean? Difficulty, from one to four. It is measured, not guessed: a perfect run of that mine leaves that much stamina to spare. Stars are your own progress on the station; pickaxes are how hard it is.
• I bought a line pack but the line is still locked. Open Settings (the gear on the main menu) and tap Restore purchases. Make sure the phone is signed in to the same App Store or Google Play account you bought with. If the store says the purchase is still pending (family approval, slow payment), the line unlocks by itself as soon as the store confirms.
• Why can’t I buy a line yet? A line pack opens once you have cleared the station where that line meets a line you already have — for example, the North East line after Outram Park. The Workshop tells you which station. You do not have to finish the East–West line first.
• Can I get a line without paying? Yes. Every line pack can also be unlocked for 20,000 verified gold: gold banked in clears that our server has verified (every clear is sent and replayed). The purchase sheet shows your verified gold and an Unlock with gold button beside the store price. Gold unlocks are restored from our server by your player key, not by the app store.
• I got a new phone — do I have to buy the lines again? No. Purchases belong to your App Store or Google Play account, not the handset. Install the game on the new phone while signed into the same account and tap Restore purchases. You are never charged twice. Progress earned by playing travels with your phone’s own backup instead (iCloud on iPhone, Google backup on Android).
• The salvage ad did not play. The ad needs a connection and an available ad; when there is none, the game says so and offers the choice again. You are never charged, and nothing else in the game depends on ads.
• How do I change the controls? Settings → Controls switches between tap-to-move and the virtual joystick, and chooses which side the joystick sits on. You can also switch from the pause menu during a run.
• Where does my leaderboard name come from? You never type one. The game gives your device a random two-word name, such as Lucky Otter, and shows it at the top of each station’s leaderboard. It cannot be changed; a new phone or a reinstall gets a new one.
• My time did not appear on the leaderboard. Every clear (extracting with at least one star, in the campaign or the Daily Mine) is sent by itself; if the phone is offline it waits on the device and goes when a connection returns. The status line on the leaderboard screen shows how many clears are waiting and when it last synced. If you switched on Hide me from the boards, your clear is verified but your name is not listed. Only your best time per station is kept; a slower run never replaces it.
• Can I remove my leaderboard entries? There is no self-service option in the app. Email us with your current name and roughly when you played, and they will be removed.
• Can I play offline? Yes, entirely. Only the leaderboards, buying or gold-unlocking a line pack and watching the optional ad need a connection; clears made offline are sent later.
• Refunds. Purchases are made through Apple or Google, so refund requests go through them: Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com, Google Play via the order history in the Play Store app.

Privacy

The full privacy policy lives on its own page. The short version: no account, no analytics. What can leave your device is every clear, under a random name you can hide from the boards, for the station leaderboards and the verified-gold tally, the store’s own purchase traffic if you buy a line, and, only if you choose to watch the salvage ad, the data the ad network needs to show it.