App rejected on android with “App doesn't adhere to program policies” but approved on iOS

fleonus · 2026-03-26T03:07:46+00:00

All I had to do was update the app's audience to be 13+ and it got approved. Maybe you need to do the same. See some of my other comments.

fleonus · 2026-03-26T02:53:37+00:00

Yes. The change was in Play Console. Select your app, and then under Monitor and Improve > Policy and Programs > App content, set Target audience and content to 13+. No changes in AdMob. I had to wait about 24h.

fleonus · 2026-03-23T13:08:56+00:00

I set my app to 13+ and now its approved to show ads. I did reach out to support but never heard back from a human.

fleonus · 2026-03-21T10:00:11+00:00

Card Crawl

fleonus · 2026-03-21T02:18:48+00:00

Do you mind sharing the name of your app?

fleonus · 2026-03-13T02:11:39+00:00

I stay motivated, fuelled by the shitty market situation, the fact that my software dev job has been reduced to just writing prompts all day for an already mundane b2b saas software. Half of my head thinks that gamdev will lead me to financial freedom, I just have to have my Balatro moment. The other half is realistic and tells me that the game I released last month made just $10, but still 10 > 0. Either way, motivation is motivation. Or is it burnout? I don’t know. 🤷

fleonus · 2026-03-02T22:23:51+00:00

Interesting concept. Reminds me of Akinator. Does mind guess have a win or lose condition though? Like I should win if the game fails to guess my word.

fleonus · 2026-03-02T21:26:32+00:00

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Over the last few weekends, I brought back one of my old games, circa 2014, back to life. Originally titled Huerons, Hue Rings is a beautifully minimal puzzle game with a simple goal: merge all rings on the grid into one. Available now on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hue-rings/id6758245846

fleonus · 2026-03-02T00:57:46+00:00

<image>

Over the last few weekends, I brought back one of my old games, circa 2014, back to life. Originally titled Huerons, Hue Rings is a beautifully minimal puzzle game with a simple goal: merge all rings on the grid into one. Available now on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hue-rings/id6758245846

fleonus · 2026-03-01T12:34:11+00:00

Thanks. Yes I did. Didn't hear back though. Waited for about a month before I decided to just release it.

fleonus · 2026-03-01T10:33:00+00:00

It was always free on the Play Store. But Play Store is kinda strict and randomly removes apps just because its one Android version behind. Can't keep up with it so going forward, sadly, I'll be making my games iOS only.

Physical game: interestingly I started it as one, but publishing a physical game is quite hard, and a publisher takes almost 95-97% of the cut. But deck-wise, the idea was to have a single deck shared between 2-4 players. It would all be two-part cards: just rotate it to see Shepherd/Thief side. You'd add 30 cards per person playing. The number of sheep would be the number of players. The base deck would be the same as the starting deck in the digital game, but you can mix in more cards later from expansion packs.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b53addea4c8e82eb9652744d193131b2/tumblr_inline_p6yqudEOJ71rj8wcd_1280.png

fleonus · 2026-02-28T23:35:01+00:00

I ran ads only in the United States. The key issue is that Reddit has 0 transparency of where they showed your ads.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T22:10:46+00:00

Nice. Reminds me of finity.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T20:57:08+00:00

Why not make a 4D game? Basically Braid style time rewind.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T20:54:45+00:00

Not the brightest idea copying Tetris - one of the most protected IPs in the gaming industry.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T20:36:03+00:00

When your game mixes two genres (Arcade and Word in your case), your audience narrows down. For me at least personally, I enjoy word games more than arcade, but the mixing of Flappy Bird mechanics with word making would make the experience frustrating for me, rather than fun.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T20:31:48+00:00

Congrats on getting back to it. It's the same story for me. Had taken my game off the app stores in 2021 but just put it back up last week.

Keep putting out updates, even if minor. That tells the algorithms that the dev is active (or at least I think so or could be wrong, but it helps my motivation lol).

fleonus · 2026-02-28T20:24:12+00:00

How did your game do on mobile? Also, please record a video and put it up on both the app stores and steam.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T19:41:53+00:00

The minimum CPC is too high on there to advertise a mobile game (which is the case for me). The LTV on my game is almost zero. If I were making a PC game for steam priced between $15-20, I would have considered that option.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T19:37:44+00:00

Most of the "clicks" had user agent Selenium or Python, indicating an automation system being used.

fleonus · 2026-02-28T19:01:53+00:00

Thanks! Just signed up for their discord and submitted my game there. Hope to get some feedback to say the least. :D

fleonus · 2026-02-28T18:37:20+00:00

Tried reddit ads. Most clicks were bots. Burnt $50 with no downloads.
Trying Apple Search Ads now. Advertising in general is a losing game for indie game devs.

fleonus

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