Terms of Service

These Terms govern your use of Haishoku (“the app”), operated by Back Room Strategies Ltd (“we,” “us”). By installing or using the app, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the app.

What Haishoku is

Haishoku is a daily camera-based color-finding game. Each day, the app presents three colors drawn from a century of color theory — beginning with Sanzo Wada’s Haishoku Soukan (1933). Players use their phone’s camera to find each color in the world around them. The app reads color from the live camera feed in real time and reports how close the match is.

The app is provided as-is and as-available, with no guarantee of uptime, accuracy, or fitness for any particular purpose. Color matching is inherently affected by ambient light, your phone’s white balance, and the optical properties of the surface you’re sampling — perfect matches are not always physically possible.

Free tier and Haishoku+

The app is free to install and play. The free tier is supported by ads served via Google AdMob.

Haishoku+is an optional subscription that removes the ads, unlocks the in-app archive of recent puzzles — including the ability to play past days you missed — adds a cumulative stats overview (days played, streak count, tier distribution, average ΔE), and enables optional cross-device sync of your match history via Project Flânerie (sign-in is optional within Haishoku+; see the Privacy Policyfor what is stored). Subscription billing is handled by your platform’s store — Google Play Billing on Android, Apple’s App Store on iOS — on monthly and annual terms. You can cancel at any time from the Google Play Store or from Apple’s Settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.

We may adjust the price or the included features of Haishoku+ in future versions. Existing subscribers will be given notice in the app before a price change applies to their subscription.

Accounts

Free tier. Haishoku does not require an account to play the free tier. Your daily progress, color-vision preference, and settings are stored locally on your device.

Haishoku+ subscribers — sign-in required (v1.1.0+). Starting in v1.1.0, subscribing to Haishoku+ requires signing in with Google so we can verify the subscription server-side and keep it active across your devices through Project Flânerie, our shared identity layer. Signing in creates a Flânerie account for you, keyed on your Google identity. The Privacy Policy describes exactly what is stored and where. The same sign-in also syncs your match history across devices.

You can sign out at any time from Settings. Signing out stops syncing and pauses the cross-device subscription tie until you sign back in; it does not cancel your underlying store subscription. To cancel the subscription itself, use the Google Play Store (on Android) or Apple’s Settings (on iOS). You can request full account deletion (which removes your Flânerie account and all the data stored under it) by emailing seth@backroomstrategies.com from the address you signed in with.

Existing v1.0.x subscribers updating to v1.1.0. If you subscribed before v1.1.0 without signing in, your store subscription is unchanged — but you’ll need to sign in once in the app to claim it under your Flânerie account so the server can keep your Haishoku+ active. Until you sign in, the app will treat you as a free-tier user.

Camera and photos

The camera is used solely for live color sampling. The app does not record video, capture stills, or save anything from the camera feed to your device or to any server. See the Privacy Policy for details.

Intellectual property

The Wada source. Sanzo Wada’s Haishoku Soukan (配色総鑑), originally published 1933–34, is in the public domain. The 348 combinations we draw from are Seigensha’s 2011 curated reissue of that work (commonly known in English as A Dictionary of Colour Combinations), accessed via Matt DesLauriers’s freely-licensed digitization (dictionary-of-colour-combinations on npm, MIT license). The original English color names from that volume are retained in the bundled data for reference but are not currently shown in the app.

The Haishoku catalog (HSK codes), the brand, the app design. Copyright Back Room Strategies Ltd, all rights reserved. The HSK numbering scheme, the Haishoku name and wordmark, and the visual and interaction design of the app are not licensed for reuse.

Future palettes.As we add palettes from other sources (Itten, Albers, Le Corbusier, Munsell, contemporary contributors) and algorithmic generators in those sources’ idioms, each addition will be added under whatever license terms are appropriate to its source, with attribution as required. Public-domain sources will be noted as such.

Acceptable use

You may use the app for personal, non-commercial purposes. You may not:

• Reverse-engineer the app to bypass the daily-puzzle cadence, to extract the future palette catalog beyond what is shipped in the public app bundle, or to bypass the Haishoku+ entitlement check.
• Use the app to harass, stalk, or endanger anyone.
• Impersonate us or falsely claim affiliation with us.

Disclaimers

The app is provided “as-is.” We make no warranty of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of your use of the app, including anything that happens at the physical location where you choose to play.

Your use of the app at physical locations is at your own risk. Looking at the world through your phone’s camera reduces your awareness of your surroundings. Use reasonable judgment — don’t play in traffic, don’t trespass, don’t ignore your environment.

Termination

You can stop using the app at any time by uninstalling it. If you have an active Haishoku+ subscription, uninstalling does not automatically cancel it — manage subscriptions in the Google Play Store (on Android) or Apple’s Settings (on iOS). We may suspend or terminate access if you violate these Terms.

Changes to these Terms

If we change these Terms in any material way, we’ll update the “Last updated” date and note the change in the app before the updated version ships. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email seth@backroomstrategies.com.