Terms of Service

1. This agreement

These terms are the agreement between you and Synthesist Ventures (Pty) Ltd about your use of Torchkeep — the app on Android and iOS, this website, and the services behind them (together, “Torchkeep”). They take effect on 15 September 2026 and apply from the moment you create an account or use the app.

Our privacy policy is part of this agreement and explains what we collect and why. If you do not agree with either document, do not use Torchkeep — and if you already have an account, delete it.

We have tried to write this in ordinary English. Where a sentence is doing legal work that plain phrasing would not do, it says so rather than hiding it in capitals.

2. Who you are contracting with

Torchkeep is made and operated by Synthesist Ventures (Pty) Ltd, a company incorporated in South Africa. South Africa’s Electronic Communications and Transactions Act requires us to publish the following before you transact with us electronically:

3. Who may use Torchkeep

• You must be at least 13, or older if the minimum age for using an online service without a parent’s consent where you live is higher — 16 in several EU countries. Torchkeep is not designed for children and we do not knowingly keep an account for one.
• If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must agree to these terms with you and remains responsible for your use of Torchkeep and for any subscription bought through your account.
• One account per person. Accounts are for people, not shared between them, and using several accounts to get around a limit or a spent trial is a breach of these terms.
• You must be able to enter this agreement — not barred from using Torchkeep by us, and not subject to sanctions or trade restrictions that would make it unlawful for us to serve you.

If you believe a child has an account, write to admin@synthesistventures.com and we will delete it.

4. Your account

You sign in with an email address and a password, or with a passkey where your device supports one. Keep those credentials to yourself: anything done through your account is treated as done by you, and we cannot tell the difference. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has got in.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete account, or ask us from the web if you have already uninstalled the app. Deletion is immediate, permanent and not reversible by us — it removes your hero, Runes, Rituals, Quests, completion history, streaks, engravings, Journey progress, Coins, inventory and companion links. The privacy policy sets out the two narrow things that outlive it.

Before you delete, use Settings → Export my data. We do not keep a copy for you afterwards, and we cannot rebuild an account from our backups on request.

5. What Torchkeep is

Torchkeep turns habits into a game. You track habits (Runes), group them into stacks (Rituals), complete Quests, keep a streak alive as a campfire, and earn XP, Coins and four character stats along a three-year Journey. Some quests are personalised automatically using your level, your rituals, your stated likes and dislikes and — if you turn location on — the weather where you are. Part of that personalisation runs through a third-party AI model on our servers; the privacy policy names it.

Torchkeep also has optional social features: Companions, sharing a Ritual by link or QR code, shared vigils, and sending encouragement (Sparks). There is no freeform messaging between users — camp post carries notices the system writes, not text you type at someone. What other heroes can see about you is set by your own privacy settings in the app.

6. The trial and the subscription

Torchkeep is paid. There is no free tier and no advertising. You get a full trial first, and after that a subscription bought through Google Play or the App Store.

The trial takes no card and turns into nothing. It does not convert into a paid subscription automatically and you are never charged for it. Its clock starts when you finish or skip the opening questions, not when you create the account, so abandoning setup half-way does not quietly spend your days.

One trial per person. If you delete your account with trial days left and later sign up again with the same email address, we give you back the days you had left rather than a fresh 30. We recognise the address through a one-way hash and cannot read it back — §8 of the privacy policy explains the record and its 12-month limit. Deliberately cycling accounts to renew a trial is a breach of §9.

Prices, renewal and cancellation live in the store. The price, the currency and any tax are shown to you before you confirm, and a subscription renews at the end of each period until you cancel it in Google Play or the App Store. Deleting the app — or your Torchkeep account — does not cancel a subscription, and we cannot cancel one for you. If we change the price, we will tell you before it applies to you and you can cancel; where the store requires your explicit consent to a rise, it will ask you.

Lapsing is not deletion. If you stop subscribing, your account goes read-only. Your history stays put, you can still read and edit your rituals and export everything, and picking a subscription back up restores the rest. We do not delete an account for non-payment.

7. Cancelling, refunds and cooling-off

You can cancel at any time in the store, and cancelling stops the next renewal rather than ending the period you have already paid for.

Refunds are the store’s to give. Google and Apple take the payment, so a refund request goes through Google Play or the App Store under their published policies. We cannot refund a charge we did not take. What we can do — and will, if you write to us and something has plainly gone wrong — is extend or comp your access while the store sorts it out.

Your own law may give you more than the store’s policy does:

• EU and UK. You have 14 days to withdraw from a distance contract. Because a subscription gives you access immediately, you are asked to consent to it starting within that window, and doing so ends the withdrawal right for the part already supplied. Ask us and we will help you exercise it with the store rather than sending you in circles.
• South Africa. The seven-day cooling-off right for electronic transactions in ECTA s44 applies as that Act provides, including its exceptions — among them a service you asked us to begin straight away.
• Everywhere. Nothing here removes a refund or cancellation right your local consumer law gives you and does not allow us to contract out of.

8. XP, Coins and everything else in the game

• They are not money. XP, Coins, levels, streaks, stats, items, chests and everything else inside Torchkeep have no monetary value, cannot be exchanged for cash, and cannot be sold, traded or transferred outside the game. You hold a licence to use them inside Torchkeep; you do not own them as property.
• Nothing in the game is for sale for real money. The subscription buys the app. It does not buy Coins, items, chests, XP or progress, and there is no way to spend real money on any of them. Chests are earned by playing, never bought — there is no paid randomised reward in Torchkeep.
• Coins never buy a number the game asks you to believe. Coins buy how your fire looks and how your hero presents. They do not buy streak protection, XP, levels or stats, because a streak you could buy would stop measuring anything.
• We can adjust the economy. We may correct, reset or remove virtual items to fix a bug, close an exploit or keep the game fair, without compensation. Where we close a way of getting something, we do not take back what you already earned or bought with Coins.

9. Acceptable use

When you use Torchkeep, you agree not to:

• Break the law with it, or use it in a way that breaks the law where you are;
• Harass, threaten, impersonate or abuse another person through Companions, shared vigils, Sparks, shared Rituals or any other feature;
• Put unlawful, infringing, hateful or sexually explicit material into any field you can type in — rune and ritual titles, notes, oaths, your hero name — including anything you share with another hero;
• Fake progress through automation, scripts, modified clients, emulated devices or extra accounts, or exploit a bug instead of reporting it;
• Cycle accounts or addresses to renew a trial, or otherwise get around a limit we have set;
• Probe, overload or interfere with our servers, or try to reach an account or data that is not yours;
• Reverse-engineer, decompile or extract the source of the app, except as much as the law where you live expressly allows despite this clause;
• Copy, scrape or resell Torchkeep’s content, artwork or data, or use it to build a competing product.

Security research done in good faith is welcome — tell us at admin@synthesistventures.com before you go looking, leave other people’s accounts alone, and give us a reasonable chance to fix what you find. We will not treat that as a breach of this section.

10. What you write

Your habit names, notes, oaths, hero name and everything else you type stay yours. We do not claim ownership of any of it.

To run the service we need your permission to store and process it: you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, back up, display and process what you write, only as far as operating Torchkeep for you requires. It ends when you delete the content or your account, subject to the backup rotation described in the privacy policy.

Sharing a Ritual shares its text. A share link or QR code captures that Ritual as it is at that moment and hands a copy to whoever opens it, who can then edit it as their own. Anyone with the link can use it, so treat one like a link to a public page and do not put anything private in a Ritual you are about to share. Editing your own copy afterwards does not change a copy someone already took.

You confirm that what you write is yours to write and does not infringe anyone else’s rights. We may remove content that breaches §9 or the law, and will tell you why where we can.

11. Our side of the intellectual property

Torchkeep’s name, campfire mark, artwork, writing, design, game systems and software belong to us or our licensors. You get a personal, revocable, non-transferable licence to use the app for what it is for, on devices you control, for as long as this agreement lasts. That licence does not let you copy, modify, distribute, sublicense or sell any part of it.

If you think something in Torchkeep infringes your rights, write to admin@synthesistventures.com with enough detail to identify the work and where it appears, and we will look into it.

12. The app stores

Torchkeep is distributed through Google Play and the App Store, and their own terms apply to you alongside these. The stores decide what is available where, and a store removing or restricting the app is outside our control.

If you got Torchkeep from the App Store

Apple requires us to say the following, and it is accurate:

• This agreement is between you and Synthesist Ventures (Pty) Ltd only. Apple is not a party to it.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for Torchkeep and its content, and for any support and maintenance. Apple has no obligation to provide either.
• If Torchkeep fails to conform to any warranty that applies, you may tell Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any. To the maximum extent the law allows, that is the whole of Apple’s warranty obligation; everything else is ours.
• We, not Apple, are responsible for any claim that Torchkeep is faulty, infringes someone’s intellectual property, or fails to meet a legal or consumer-protection requirement.
• You confirm that you are not in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as terrorist-supporting, and that you are not on a US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries may enforce this agreement against you as a third-party beneficiary of it.
• Your use of Torchkeep must comply with the Usage Rules in the Apple Media Services Terms.

13. Availability and changes

Torchkeep is a new product, built and run by a small team. We aim to keep it up and correct, but we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free service, and we do not offer a service-level guarantee. Maintenance, a provider outage, a network or power failure or a bug can all take it offline for a while.

We may add, change or remove features as the product develops. Where a change materially reduces what you get from a subscription you are paying for, we will give you reasonable notice and you may cancel; where you have prepaid for time you will not now receive, ask us and we will arrange a pro-rata refund through the store.

Export your data now and again if it matters to you. Keeping a copy is the only protection against data loss that does not depend on us.

14. Ending this agreement

You can stop at any time: cancel in the store, and delete your account when you want the data gone.

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that we must act on by law, or that is being used to harm someone. Except where the breach is serious or ongoing harm makes waiting unreasonable, we will warn you first, explain what is wrong and give you a chance to put it right. If we close your account we will, where we lawfully can, give you a reasonable window to export your data first, and refund the unused part of anything you have prepaid unless the closure was for a deliberate breach.

If we ever discontinue Torchkeep, we will give notice in the app and by email, leave the export working for as long as we can, and refund unused prepaid time.

Sections 8, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20 and 21 survive the end of this agreement.

15. Torchkeep is not advice

Quest suggestions are generated automatically, partly by an AI model, and can be wrong, repetitive or a poor fit for you. Use your own judgement before acting on one, especially where physical activity, health or safety are involved, and stop if something hurts. You are responsible for deciding whether an activity is safe and appropriate for you — if you are unsure, particularly if you have a health condition or are pregnant, speak to a doctor first.

Torchkeep is not a crisis service. If you are in distress or at risk, contact a local emergency number or a crisis line rather than an app.

16. What we do not promise

To the fullest extent the law allows, Torchkeep is provided “as is” and “as available”, and we exclude all implied warranties and conditions — merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any promise that the app will be uninterrupted, secure, error-free or that it will produce any particular result. Habits are hard and no app can guarantee you will build one.

This does not take away rights you have by law. Consumers in South Africa keep everything the Consumer Protection Act gives them, including the implied quality and safety rights in s55; consumers in the EU, the UK and anywhere else with mandatory consumer guarantees keep those too. Where a law says a term like this one cannot apply to you, it does not.

17. Limits on what we owe you

We never limit liability for these: death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, gross negligence, or anything else the law does not permit us to limit. Those sit outside everything below.

Otherwise, and to the fullest extent the law allows:

• We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive loss, for lost profits, revenue or goodwill, or for loss of game progress, streaks, XP, Coins or virtual items;
• We are not liable for what another hero does, for what a third-party provider or app store does, or for a failure caused by your device, network or operating system;
• Our total liability for everything arising out of Torchkeep is capped at the greater of what you paid us in the 12 months before the claim and R1 000.

The cap has a floor rather than sitting at zero precisely so that it is a real limit and not a disguised disclaimer. Some places do not allow some of these exclusions; where that is so, the exclusion does not apply to you and the rest still stands.

18. If you cause us a claim

If someone brings a claim against us because of how you used Torchkeep — in breach of §9, in breach of the law, or over content you wrote or shared — you agree to cover the reasonable costs and damages we incur as a result. We will tell you promptly, let you take part in the defence, and not settle without asking you.

This section does not apply to consumers where the law where you live does not allow it, and never covers a claim caused by our own wrongdoing.

19. Privacy

The privacy policy is the full account of what we collect, who processes it, how long we keep it and how to export, reset or erase it. It is part of this agreement. We do not sell your data, we run no advertising, and the text you write in the app is kept out of analytics.

20. If something goes wrong between us

Write to admin@synthesistventures.com first. Tell us what happened and what you want done about it, and we will reply within 30 days. Most things end there, and both of us would rather they did.

If that does not settle it, you keep every route your own law gives you. We do not require arbitration, we do not stop you joining a collective or representative action, and we do not ask you to give up a class remedy where one exists.

• South Africa — you may take a consumer complaint to the National Consumer Commission or the relevant ombud under the Consumer Protection Act, and a data complaint to the Information Regulator.
• EU and UK — you may use your national consumer protection body or an approved dispute-resolution scheme, and you may bring proceedings in the courts where you live.

Complaints about your personal data have their own route, set out in §9 of the privacy policy. You never have to come to us first for those.

21. The law that applies

This agreement is governed by the law of South Africa, and disputes may be brought in the courts of the Gauteng Division of the High Court, Johannesburg.

If you are a consumer, that does not move you. You keep the protection of the mandatory consumer law of the country you live in, and you may bring proceedings there — a consumer in the EU or UK can sue in their own courts whatever this section says, and we will not argue otherwise. Where your local mandatory law and this agreement conflict, your law wins and the rest of this agreement carries on.

The UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

22. The rest of it

• Changes to these terms. We may update this page. For a material change we will give notice in the app or by email at least 14 days before it takes effect, and the date at the top will change. Continuing to use Torchkeep after that means you accept the new version; if you would rather not, cancel and delete your account, and ask us for a pro-rata refund of prepaid time you will not use.
• Notices. We reach you at the email address on your account, or in the app. You reach us at admin@synthesistventures.com, or by post at Synthesist Ventures (Pty) Ltd, 222 Smit St, Johannesburg 2001, South Africa.
• Transfer. You may not transfer your account or this agreement to anyone else. We may transfer it if the business is sold or merged, on notice to you and without reducing your rights.
• Severability. If a clause here turns out to be unenforceable, it is trimmed to what is enforceable, or dropped, and the rest of the agreement keeps working.
• No waiver. If we do not enforce something straight away, we have not given it up.
• Events outside our control. Neither of us is liable for a failure caused by something genuinely outside our control — a provider outage, a network or power failure, a natural disaster, war, or a change in the law. This never excuses us from refunding time you paid for and did not get.
• Whole agreement. These terms and the privacy policy are the agreement between us about Torchkeep, and replace anything said earlier. That does not exclude liability for anything we told you fraudulently.
• Language. This agreement is written in English, and the English version governs. A translation is a convenience, not a second contract.

23. Contact

Questions about these terms: admin@synthesistventures.com, or +27 72 449 7688. By post: Synthesist Ventures (Pty) Ltd, 222 Smit St, Johannesburg 2001, South Africa.

For help with the app itself, the help page is a better start, and the FAQ answers most practical questions.