Pixalate's COPPA Manual Reviews: ‘Roller Polar’

Welcome to Pixalate’s CTV & Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA, a series containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness.

The educators manually review thousands of mobile apps available in the Google Play & Apple App Stores as well as connected TV (CTV) apps from the Roku Channel Store and Amazon Fire TV App Store using the COPPA Rule factors shown below & make those results available to the public at ratings.pixalate.com.

This post takes a look at a game which is available from the Google Play and Apple App Stores. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to the app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children).

Manually reviewed in this post

Roller Polar (Google Play Store)
Roller Polar (Apple App Store)

The 10 COPPA Rule factors

The teacher will indicate the factors they relied upon in their assessment using the 10 factors shown below that reflect the 10 child-directed factors in the COPPA Rule.

Reviewed by: Emma Burdis

Manual Review: Roller Polar

Likely audience after manual review

Developer: Nitrome (Google Play Store)
Developer: Nitrome (Apple App Store)
Google Bundle ID: com.nitrome.rollerpolar
Apple Bundle ID: 939700885
Privacy Policy
Emma’s Take: A fun jumping game which is easy to access and provides a fun alternative to endless runner games.

COPPA factors used to determine audience

You play as a polar bear atop a giant snowball rolling down a gentle hill. As you progress, the snowball picks up rocks, trees, moose, and other obstacles which will cause you to fall off, unless you can time your jumps to successfully avoid them. Low-flying birds can also knock you from your snowball. Coins are collected along the way, which accumulate across levels. These can be used to purchase different playable bears in the “BearWear” section. However, these are limited to different skins and don’t change the playability of the character. The controls are very straightforward and are limited to tapping the screen, either once or twice for a single or double jump.

The style of the game animation is deliberately pixelated in the style of older video games. Whilst this will likely appeal to millennials who enjoyed these when they were younger, this type of animation is popular with children too, due in no small part to the influence of Minecraft and Roblox who also use a blocky style.

Adverts play frequently when you die, which are often playable demos for other games. Some are for adult-directed sites, such as real-money solitaire. Others are for games that are mixed audiences, such as farming games.

Some of the reviews for the game appear to have been written by children, due to the language and emojis used. Another states “I would recommend it for a children’s game”

Privacy:

The developers have a basic Privacy Policy on their website but does not refer to COPPA or how they handle data from children.

Screenshots of Roller Polar

About Pixalate’s Trust & Safety Advisory Board

Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board was created to bring in individuals with experience using child-directed apps in the classroom to review and assess which apps are child-directed. This manual review process serves to quality check Pixalate’s automated review process. See our full methodology for more information.

Disclaimer

This blog post published by Pixalate is available for informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice. By viewing this blog post, the reader understands and agrees that there is no attorney-client relationship between the reader and the blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in the applicable jurisdiction(s), and readers are urged to consult their own legal counsel on any specific legal questions concerning any specific situation. The content of this blog post reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and this blog post is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings pertaining to mobile and Connected TV (CTV) apps.