iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

日本の論理パズル愛好家の皆様、朗報です！「ダンジョン」と「数独」を組み合わせた新しいパズルゲーム「Dundoku」が、ついに日本語に翻訳されました！毎日の脳トレがお好きな方は、お気に入りのスナックを用意して、老僧と一緒に古いダンジョンマップの巻物を復元しましょう。数独の知識は一切不要です。あとは老僧が教えてくれますよ 😉 #ゲーム制作 #ゲーム開発 #インディーゲーム #indiegame #puzzlegame #logic

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

What game is this from? Wrong answers only 😏 #gamedev #gameguessr

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Why fight, they’re both so young and beautiful you know 😉🤪

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

But you know it’s just Wednesday now right?😉

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Thank you for the support though it seems too long nowadays 🙂 (feeling a bit slowpokeish) and many fix-later things are still left in the game. We have so many improvements in mind if the game works well with audiences / platforms.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Finally !!! 🥳🥳🥳 Just 1.5 year and Dundoku is ready for google play. Almost 😅 Indie game dev is like living on hard mode but it’s worth it! The moment you press RELEASE button 🤌🍾😎 #indiegame #gamedev #mobilegames #jeuxmobiles #puzzlegame #sudoku

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Hurrah guys! We’ve launched pre registration for Dundoku on Google Play! 🎊🙀 Support is needed as never before so please if you like the game- hit that pre-reg button and get your early supporter reward when the game releases! It’s free ‼️❤️ #dundoku #puzzlegame #gamedev #indiegame #screenshotsaturday

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Heyya! We’ve been accepted to Poki! 🎉🔥🫣 A week after google play took our most profitable game (it’s been feeding us for 5 years while we lived in Canada) because of some false impersonation claims. Should we cry or celebrate or what? 🤔 First game for Poki is Dundoku of course #indiedev #gamedev

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Played it, very nice puzzle game 👍

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

This starter pack + mobile + indie + the cat’s really involved (she’s a character and sfx artist in our first game) = rare 😜

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

If anyone reading this has any ideas about what else we can do, we’re open to suggestions and would appreciate any kind of help. Shares and likes are very welcome! Wishing everyone peace. Register your game names if they become successful, and maybe give our new game Dundoku a try too 😉

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

The game is still available on the Apple App Store though we’ve no idea for how long. So that's where things at. The story is not over yet, we’re considering further steps. Still hoping someone from Google see this post or one other posts and help resolve the case without too much blood and tears

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

We also made a post on the Google Play Dev Community, didn't receive any response there either. Contacted Google Play Console support, they only told us that our case was already being handled by the Policy Appeals team and that they couldn't help because the team had already provided resolution.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

A similar AI now is likely taking to us, providing no links, no documents proving the brand belongs to another party, nothing. So far we’ve got 9 identical responses, each simply copying the original. A real person couldn't possibly be this indifferent to all the arguments we provided, right? 🙂

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

This led us to believe that the whole situation might have been triggered by some kind of AI system inside Google that automatically checks games for similarities in names and icons, then gives priority to the game with the higher number of installs, treating it as the established brand.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

We sent all of our arguments to the Policy Appeals team multiple times and in different forms. Every time, we received THE EXACT SAME email with the same text as the original response, along with a request to obtain authorization documents from the brand owner.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

And the icon is not even remotely same as ours, even if it was registered as a TM. But here's the thing: we checked all publicly available trademark databases in the US and Europe and couldn't find any similar registrations. So if there is no trademark, why was our game removed in those countries?

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Alright. Maybe they registered a trademark for the name and icon and provided it to Google. If so, that would already raise some questions regarding first-use rights in many countries, because they were not the first ones to use the phrase "How to Loot".

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Yes, absolutely. But every mobile games tracker says otherwise. Their game was 2 months after ours. Checked 3 different sources, competitor's release date is June 2020 (AppBrain, App Magic, Aso Spy): www.appbrain.com/app/how-to-l... appmagic.rocks/google-play/... asospy.com/app/details/...

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

To us the icons look different and are clearly distinguishable. Yes the titles are similar, but does another dev actually have exclusive rights to it? At the time it was a common meme phrase. Let's say they released their game before us and we simply missed it while rushing to launch. Could that be?

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

We even joked between ourselves back then that they had copied the idea of our lava jar icon 🙂 Here are our icon from the beginning, our icon six years later, and the competitor's icon for comparison.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

We searched the store and found now there was only one game with that title and it had 100M downloads. Our game reached only around 800K downloads by that point. As far as we remember, this particular competitor actually appeared later than our game.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Basically they’re saying we’re impersonating the brand "How to Loot - Pin Pull". There was no link to the developer nor the actual game, just the brand name. Considering there were around a dozen games with How to Loot in their titles at the time, this feels like a pretty unprofessional claim but ok

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Interesting detail: they removed our game without explaining why it violated something nor whose rights were harmed. "Okay," we thought, and submitted an appeal explaining that we had been using the name and icon from the very start. In response, we received an email from Policy Appeals team:

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

June 30, 2026 was supposed to be a special day for us. It was the day we released the demo for our new game, Dundoku, on itch. But the excitement of our first public release was cut short by a message from Google:

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Soon enough similar games started showing up with similar names and others with completely different names but very similar gameplay which is just how the mobile market works. For years they all seemed to coexist peacefully. At least that's what we thought until one particularly sad day of June 2026

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Three months later, on April 27, 2020, we released the first Android version. There's a post on X with the announce. The game was called How to Loot + a subtitle that changed depending on whatever was trendy on the market. Sounds crazy, but it's pretty common practice in mobile game dev.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Like many others, we were frustrated. Then we thought if this is the game people actually want to play (and judging by the comments on those games it clearly was the case) then why not just make it ourselves?

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Like most people who saw those viral ads, we clicked on them too. But as you've probably guessed, the game you actually downloaded looked nothing like what was shown in the ad. It was usually just another match-3 game, a mobile strategy game, or something completely different.

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Around that time, those infamous fake mobile game ads started popping up everywhere. You know the ones where you save a princess or steal treasure by pulling metal pins. Most of them had captions like "How to Loot and Save the Girl" etc. Here's one we recreated using our own game asset:

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

It all started in early 2020. We had just moved to Canada about six months earlier and, like everyone else, found ourselves stuck at home because of the COVID lockdowns. Not a biggie for two introverted game devs who already spend most of their time at home either playing games or making them

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

A little introduction about us: we are a married couple and, at the same time, a two-person-and-a-cat mobile indie game dev studio (yes, a rare occasion, we know 😉 ).A lot of things in our story might seem strange or even wild, but that's mostly because of the unique nature of mobile game dev

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

A 🧵 about how Google Play removed our game and how we have spent the last 10 days banging our heads against an (most likely) AI support bot trying to defend our game. #indiedev #gamedev #indiegame #ゲーム制作 #ゲーム開発 #インディーゲーム

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Heya good #gamedev , #indiedev or #puzzle players! Basically anyone who enjoys unique puzzle mechanics and #cozy gameplay! ‼️We need your help‼️ If you have an android device please pre-register for our upcoming game Dundoku if the trailer, screenshots and game’s idea appeals to you 😉❤️ Thanks 🙏

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Up for a mobile puzzle game? - 5-10 min session - challenging puzzles w unique mechanics - no forced ads nor in-app offers - cozy anti-brainrot gameplay Pre-register here😎: play.google.com/store/apps/d... #gamedev #indiedev #indiegame #puzzle #ゲーム制作 #ゲーム開発 #インディーゲーム

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I just don’t like talking or doxing in any way, but for the sake of the new game, I had to at least record a voiceover. Especially since on the day of the new game’s announcement, GooglePlay and a major mobile publisher banned our most popular game that’s been feeding us for 6 years. Coincidence? 🤔

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Would love any kind of feedback and also if any1 wants to be one of the first testers of mobile version (Android) - please drop us a message or file a form on our website 😉 Demo on itch: a42games.itch.io/dundoku-dung... #indiegame #indiedev #puzzle #gamedev #ゲーム制作 #ゲーム開発 #インディーゲーム

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Heya good #gamedev folks! We released a demo of our little sudoku-dungeon-puzzle game on itch. The title Dundoku: Dungeon Sudoku Puzzle. Basically you need to: - Solve epic puzzles by fixing decaying dungeon maps - Help elderly monk to restore desolated library - Stop brainrot and improve focus

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Is this a good time to drop a teaser/trailer for our upcoming dungeon puzzle game? 🤔 Well anyway we’ll drop it right here right now! 😉 What do you think, would you be interested in playing or testing such game? 😉 #gamedev #indiegame #PuzzleGame #ゲーム制作 #ゲーム開発

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Today 33% of our #gamedev #indie studio is celebrating their birthday 🥳 So another 33% of the studio made this layered philo 🍓🍌 🌰 cake. Congratulations are very welcome 🤗

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

This is our #indiedev studio’s CEO (cat extremely old) and we made this crutch 🩼 so she could clean herself more easily. And what did you do for your car today?😜

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

You know, nope. We’d say it’s much better 😉 also funny title for a game company 👍

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

A little repair animation we made for the game. You just have to give all your hard earned gold coins to this little fella to see it 😜 #screenshotsaturday #animation #gamedev #indiegame #madeincanada

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Hey #indiegamedev people, how you usually deal with music? We know a place where you can take amazing music by real Japanese composers for free, we’ll share the link below. In our recent game we’re using this beautiful calm melody 🔊🔊🔊 Volume up ⬆️ Also share your #gamedev secrets👇😉

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Hey check this out! If you’d seen this game icon, what would you think of the game? What it’s like? The genre, setting, game mechanics etc Algorithm please find proactive people who love to interact and to give bold guesses 😉 our upcoming game needs this! #screenshotsaturday #indiegame #gamedev

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

1 like for such a cutie? 😳 Cmon Bluesky you can do better 💪 Give our gamedev cat some love 😜 And we’re really curious about the 🐞, what was it doing does anybody know? #gamedev

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A42 Games @a42games.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Who’s in the wrong here? Was the car’s reaction justified? 🤔 Any entomologists here to explain this weird ladybug’s behavior? #cat #ladybug #funnycat #help

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