The plan, in one paragraph
Wardenfall carries exactly two ad surfaces, both plain display banners, both on screens where nothing is being played: the bottom of the main menu and the bottom of the pause screen. There are no popups, no interstitials between rooms, no rewarded videos to revive, and nothing over the canvas during play. That is the whole plan, and it is written into the game's code as a rule rather than a setting.
Why not the game specific ad products
Google, like every ad network, has a product built for HTML5 games. It serves interstitials and rewarded ads: the full screen video between levels, the "watch an ad to continue" prompt on death. Those formats pay better than banners, and we turned them down. A one sitting game lives on momentum. A thirty second video between rooms is not a small interruption in a two hour arc; it is the thing that makes people close the tab. Rewarded revives are worse, because they turn a design decision (how much a death costs) into a business decision.
Plain banners on menu screens come from a regular publisher account. They pay less. They also cost the player nothing: the main menu is where you already are before you decide to play, and the pause screen is where you already stopped.
The rules we hold ourselves to
- Menu and pause screen only. Never the HUD, never a loading screen, never a death screen, never over gameplay.
- Banners only. No interstitials, no video, no rewarded formats, no ads that look like game buttons.
- Separated from controls. The banner is a strip at the bottom; the buttons sit centred above it, with a gap. We will not move them closer.
- Nothing loads until it is allowed. No ad script is even requested until the account is approved and the placement is configured, and in regions that require consent, not until you have given it. A player who declines consent loses nothing.
- Supporting us does not remove ads, because there is nothing to unlock in a free game and we will not build a paywall to sell its absence. It does make the studio depend on them less.
Why write this down
Because monetisation drifts. Every studio that ended up with a revive video started with a banner and good intentions. Publishing the rules on the site, where you can quote them back at us, is the cheapest way we know to make sure the drift does not happen here. If a future post on this devlog contradicts this one, we owe you an explanation.
If you would rather support the studio directly, the support page exists for exactly that.
Published on 4 October 2026 with the first batch of devlog entries. Drafted from the project's commit log and decision records with AI writing tools, then edited by Alexis Rivard.