No ads, no subscription: why Tare is free to start and $2.99 once

Note: Tare has 200 levels in ten chapters of twenty. Chapter I is free, and the one purchase unlocks Chapters II to X, the other 180 levels. This post is the launch-day record of version 1.0, which had 80 levels, so the table, button names, and chapter numbers below describe Chapters II to IV.

Tare is out today, and the price fits in a sentence: the download and the first 20 levels are free for good, and one $2.99 purchase opens the other 60. There are no ads or subscriptions and nothing else to buy.

The full model comes first, then how it ended up this way, including the paid-app plan it replaced and the purchase App Review couldn’t find.

What’s free, what’s $2.99, and what’s never sold

The unlock screen gets its price from the App Store, so it shows your own currency. $2.99 is the US base, and Apple sets the equivalent in every other storefront. No price is written into the app anywhere.

Where the offer appears, and where it doesn’t

You can open the purchase from three places:

• the Open Chapters II-IV button under Chapter I on the chapter wall, which carries no price;
• any unlit level of Chapters II to IV;
• the same button in Settings, directly above Restore purchases.

It never opens by itself, whether at launch, when you come back, after a solve, or over the celebration when you finish Chapter I. In that last case the wall simply returns with the button in view. Nothing inside a level advertises, and the pause menu has no offer. The unlock isn’t a promoted purchase on the App Store page either, since that would sell it to someone who has never hung a weight.

Levels in chapters you haven’t bought are drawn in full but darkened, with no padlock. In Tare a padlock means that playing on will open a level, and playing alone will never open a chapter you haven’t bought. For the same reason VoiceOver says “not purchased” and never “locked”. The unlock screen doesn’t show your star total either, because a total next to a Buy button looks like something being priced, and nothing in the game is gated on stars.

The plan before this one

Until 2 September, Tare was going to be a paid app: $3.99 up front, with “In-App Purchases: none” on the store page. The reasoning was about strangers judging six screenshots. A solo developer with no track record can’t ask much of someone deciding that way.

On 1 September I played the first two finished chapters and found every level a single flat beam, which the post on solving balance puzzles covers. The next day, while rebuilding the 80-level arc, I made Chapter I free and put Chapters II to IV behind one purchase.

A free chapter settles the screenshot question. By the time anyone sees the price, they have solved twenty levels, read their first picture cards and watched a “?” open. The launch plan now leaves the persuading to the free chapter instead of the price tag. The store description says exactly what’s free in its second line, because a free listing that doesn’t say so reads like a demo.

Why $2.99, with no launch discount

$2.99 is the lowest price that, by the launch plan’s judgement, still reads as something crafted and not a trinket. It is set once in US dollars, with worldwide automatic pricing.

There was no launch discount. The plan reckons that no price below $2.99 would earn back what it costs in credibility.

Why no ads, subscription or consumables

Tare opens no network connections of its own. It plays the same in airplane mode, and its App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected. Ads would bring network connections and a third-party SDK into a game built to have neither.

The purchase leaves the label as it was. StoreKit is Apple’s own store, not an SDK the game reports through. The game records nothing about the purchase beyond the fact that the chapters are open, and no analytics are attached to the offer, neither when it is shown nor when it is dismissed.

The launch plan ruled out subscriptions and consumables in so many words: “no consumables, no subscriptions, ever”. The design brief describes Tare as a crafted object, and it is sold like one, once. Hints cost a star. Nothing in a level can be bought, and stars and canvases can only be earned.

Family Sharing, restoring, and keeping the unlock

Family Sharing is on. One purchase covers your family group, and the game treats a shared purchase exactly like your own.

Restore purchases is always visible, in Settings and on the unlock screen, whether or not you’ve bought anything. On a new device you have to be able to find it before it has anything to restore.

Once granted, the unlock stays. The app clears it only when the App Store reports the purchase revoked, for example after a refund, and never because the store couldn’t be reached. The design rules out locking a paying player out of an offline game to re-check a purchase.

Chapters still open in order. Chapter II opens as you work through Chapter I, and the unlock screen says the chapters open in order before you pay, so buying at level 3 holds no surprise. Within a chapter you can skip past up to three unsolved levels, so no single puzzle walls you off.

There are no error codes. If the App Store doesn’t answer, the unlock screen shows Try again, with Restore and the terms still there, and the button on the wall stays where it was.

The purchase App Review couldn’t find

The offer turned out to be too quiet. App Review answered the first 1.0 submission with Guideline 2.1(b), Information Needed: it could not locate the in-app purchase. The offer lived only on the chapter wall, below Chapter I’s twenty levels, and on the unlit levels, which by design carry no padlock and no price. Settings, where a reviewer looks for a purchase, had only Restore.

So on 1 October the same Open Chapters II-IV button went into Settings, directly above Restore purchases, and the reply to App Review spelled out the path step by step. Both places use one view, so it looks and reads the same, and it disappears once you’ve bought.

Ratings and sharing

Tare asks for a rating only with Apple’s standard prompt, and only in two places: when you finish Chapter II and when you finish Chapter IV, and only if you’ve solved at least three levels in that session. Finishing the free chapter never triggers the prompt, so it can’t appear anywhere near the purchase.

Settings also has a Share Tare row. It hands the system share sheet the plain App Store link with no campaign or referrer parameter, because in the plan’s words a shared link that reports who shared it is “analytics by another name”. The privacy policy lists what stays on your device.

Tare runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 18 or later. The free chapter is also where the game teaches itself without a word, which designing a puzzle with no words walks through. To see how other models compare, the best logic puzzle games for iPhone sets Tare beside ad-supported and pay-once games, and the comparison pages cover Good Sudoku, Nonograms Katana and Simon Tatham’s Puzzles. Millrace, from the same studio, is a tile puzzle whose whole game is free, with no ads.