How do I recover my cloud-saved progress from Google Play Games Service? (AB1, Android devices only)

Intent

You should follow these directions if you've previously saved Alphabear progress to the cloud and need to recover that saved state because something bad has happened to your game data. E.g., if you had to delete and reinstall the game for some reason and now find yourself back in the Tutorial.

Note that the instructions on this page are not what you should use for normal transferring of a saved state between two devices (e.g., if you play on an Android tablet while at home and on an Android phone while away from home). Those instructions are here.

Requirements

• You must have already been saving your progress to the cloud as described on this page. We can't recover a cloud save that doesn't exist!
• The device onto which you want to load the cloud data must sign in to the same Google+ profile that created the cloud save.

Steps

1. Confirm that you meet all the requirements listed in the Requirements section.
2. Start with a fresh installation of Alphabear. (This may mean that you have to delete and reinstall the app.)
3. Launch the newly installed Alphabear. It should put you onto the tutorial screen.
4. Click the Sign In button.
   
5. Wait while the game connects to Google Play Games service and looks for your cloud save.
   
6. When you see this screen, click the button to load your cloud save.
   
   • Note: If this screen doesn't come up after waiting for a few minutes, stop and try again from Step 1 (including deleting and reinstalling the app). If that still doesn't work, unfortunately the cloud save is probably corrupt. If you have a device on which the good data still exists (e.g., an old phone or a tablet), play an event on that device (in hopes of establishing an uncorrupted cloud save), then try again to load the cloud save. If you don't have such a device, unfortunately it probably isn't possible to recover your data.
7. Wait while the game loads your cloud save.
   
8. Done! The state from your other device has now been transferred to this device.
   

Notes

• For some reason that neither we nor Google understand, cloud saves are occasionally being created in a corrupt manner. Thus, some players have unfortunately lost progress by assuming they had a good save in the cloud when in fact they did not. We have investigated with Google on multiple occasions, but neither they nor we have been able to pinpoint the problem. Until we can resolve the issue, please *don't* rely on the cloud save as a guaranteed backup of your game data. Instead, please treat the installation on your device as the "gold" copy of your game data, with the cloud save being something you *might* be able to restore from if something bad happens to the data on your device.
• If the screen below doesn't come up after waiting for a few minutes, stop and try again from Step 1 (including deleting and reinstalling the app). If that still doesn't work, unfortunately the cloud save is probably corrupt. If you have a device on which the good data still exists (e.g., an old phone or a tablet), play an event on that device (in hopes of establishing an uncorrupted cloud save), then try again to load the cloud save. If you don't have such a device, unfortunately it probably isn't possible to recover your data.
  
• Please don't install a version of Alphabear lower than the version you used to create your cloud save. There has occasionally been loss of progress when, for example, people transferred a save from version 1.6 to version 1.5--version 1.6 contained some new bears that version 1.5 was not aware of, and so version 1.5 deleted these new bears from the save file.