Google finally reviewed Neon Chain.

Rejected.

Not because the game is broken. Not because Firebase exploded. Not because the leaderboard failed. Nope. Turns out when I marked Neon Chain as "safe for everyone" in Google Play, I also needed to make the same setting change in AdMob. I didn't know that, so at some point Google served an ad that Google decided wasn't appropriate for a five-year-old.

The fix took about thirty seconds.

The punishment is another round of waiting.

I've spent the last eight days checking Firebase, email, and the Play Console like a crack addict looking for a hit, so VantaQueen has had the pleasure of listening to me yell at a random Google reviewer in India who almost certainly had nothing to do with this decision. To her credit, she hasn't murdered me yet.

The good news is that Neon Chain itself is fine. The bad news is that The Waiting Game: Round 2 has officially begun.

While Google decides if my brightly colored tap-the-circles game is safe for kindergarteners, I'll be putting more time into Terminal Ghost and the Lonely Ranch Games website.

Game development in 2026:

10% coding.

90% waiting for somebody else's checkbox.