Puzzle games without ads or lives: how free games make money, and what Millrace sells instead

A free puzzle game still has to be paid for somehow, so before you install one it helps to know who pays, and with what. Below are the common models, what each asks of you, and where each shows up on an App Store page, followed by the complete price list for Millrace and the reasoning behind it.

How free puzzle games make money

Many games combine several of these. Lives on a timer, boosters for sale and ads for extra moves are a common bundle in level-based puzzle sagas. Paid-upfront games take the other route: you pay once on the product page and there is usually nothing else to buy. Threes is one, and its comparison page covers how its paid and free editions differ.

Three places on an App Store page tell you most of this:

1. Next to the Get button. “In-App Purchases” there means something is for sale.
2. The In-App Purchases list, further down the page. Item names and prices give the model away: lives, refills, coins, boosters, a remove-ads item, a monthly price.
3. App Privacy, where the developer declares what happens to data under four headings: Data Used to Track You, Data Linked to You, Data Not Linked to You, and Data Not Collected. Tracking, in Apple’s definition, means linking data from the app with other companies’ data for targeted advertising or ad measurement, or sharing it with data brokers.

Recent reviews fill in the rest.

What Millrace sells: the complete list

Millrace has no ads, no lives, and no subscription. It sells cosmetic themes, undo tokens, and a tip, and this is every item:

Theme purchases restore with your Apple Account; undo tokens are consumable, so Restore Purchases does not bring them back. There is no subscription. Apple derives the prices for other storefronts and shows your local currency at checkout.

Free: all 64 campaign levels, Freeplay, the Daily Challenge, Hint, coaching notes, Game Center, and the Classic theme, which is one of seventeen. You can try any paid theme on your own board before you decide to keep it or unlock it.

Where undo tokens fit, and where they don’t

Undo tokens are the one thing Millrace sells that touches play, and the closest thing it has to a booster, so their exact rules are worth setting out.

Inside a level, Undo is free and unlimited and never touches your tokens. After a failed run, the card offers “Undo that move”, and retrying a level costs nothing either.

Tokens are spent only in Freeplay, the endless board, where tiles spawn at random. By default the app asks before it spends one.

Free tokens arrive on their own: one each day while you hold fewer than three. Your first move on the Daily Challenge earns one, and daily streaks of 3, 7, 14, and 30 days pay out 2, 5, 10, and 20 tokens.

Running out interrupts nothing. Tapping Undo with no tokens offers the bundles, and the game carries on whether you buy or not.

Hint is free. In a level it comes from the same solver that proved the level, as a move on a winning line from where you stand. The strategy guide covers how to use it, and how to need it less.

Why there are no lives or ads

Three rules decide how the game earns its keep: never gate the base game, never make undo mandatory, and no paywalls mid-run. Everything in the price list follows from them.

Lives would break the first rule most directly. A lives system makes failure cost time: you lose, and then you wait or pay. In Millrace a loss costs one tap on Undo. The point of a fail state is that it should cost you a thought, and a run is too high a price. The levels are hard on purpose, as how they’re made explains, and a hard level with a lives meter attached rewards waiting over thinking.

Free Undo needed one guard. When a run fails, the card can say which move made the position unwinnable, but only afterwards and never live. A live warning plus free Undo would turn every level into swipe, undo, swipe until something sticks, and you’d reach the answer without understanding it.

Ads were ruled out as a design choice. An ad has to come from an ad network, and Millrace links no third-party SDKs, so there is no ad network to serve one. There is no account and no tracking, and your progress stays on your device. Purchases and Game Center, if you use it, go through Apple. The whole game plays offline; only the shop, Game Center, and links you open need a connection. The privacy policy has the details.

What this model gives up

A game that sells only optional items depends on some players choosing to buy something they don’t need. The design has other limits too. There are 64 levels, not thousands, and each one was found by search and proven by a breadth-first solver before it shipped. Progress stays on the device and doesn’t sync. If you want a long saga with events, the Two Dots comparison is fair about where Two Dots does better, and about how its lives work.

A checklist for any free puzzle game

Before installing, five questions answer most of it:

1. Does failing cost anything: a life, energy, or time spent waiting?
2. Can every level be finished without buying anything?
3. Are hints and undos rationed, and are they sold?
4. What does the In-App Purchases list contain?
5. What does the App Privacy section declare?

For Millrace, failing costs nothing and every level can be finished free. Hint is free, undo is free inside levels, and tokens are sold only for Freeplay. The list holds themes, undo bundles, and a tip, and the app has no account and no tracking. The app page has the rest.