# Nova Island — user reviews > 95 indexed App Store user reviews of Nova Island by Thirteen Games, LLC, rated 4.30/5 from 237 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/nova-island/id1526357111/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/nova-island/id1526357111.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 177 · 4★ 11 · 3★ 17 · 2★ 8 · 1★ 24 ## What do users think of Nova Island? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 👍 Unique gameplay mechanics - 🎨 Appealing art style and animations - 💰 Completely free-to-play, no pay-to-win - 🕹️ Engaging strategic depth - 🌟 Underrated and deserves more attention **Cons** - 🎲 Excessive reliance on RNG - 🔁 Repetitive and swingy gameplay - 🕰️ Slow progression and grindy unlock system - ⚖️ Unbalanced card/character power levels - 🐛 Occasional crashes and connectivity issues **Commonly reported bugs** - Soft-locking tutorial - Inconsistent performance on some devices **Most requested features** - Offline mode or paid full version - Ability to play with friends - More character/card customization options - Improved tutorial and onboarding experience ## Newest reviews (19 of 95) ### 4/5 — Why *2025-07-31, version 1.7.3* I am the player named unique I love it because most cards I like Joe the bear ### 3/5 — Suggestion for Aster/Cosmic balancing *2025-01-16* Right now cosmic's combination of draw, coins, and zap can make matches draw out unbearably long with little progress after the 10 round mark where everyone's just cycling through their decks. Zap is especially a problem since there is little counterplay against zap powers. I have a suggestion to lessen extreme cases of zap stalling out matches: the maximum amount of zap a player can use each round starts at 10. Each round they zap, that limit lowers by 1 for the rest of the match. So for example, in round 8 where one player zapped in 5 rounds before, their 9 health boosted brainwave can only zap 5 nova. This should limit stalling especially in Aster mirror matches without hampering normal uses of zap. hope this suggestion reaches the team instead of being given an automated response. ### 2/5 — Great for awhile *2024-12-02, version 1.4.2* The game is great until you reach a particular level. To start the game was enjoyable and the grind was alright to get the skins and stuff but nothing. I have even enjoyed the challenges and side challenges. But ranked is really the problem once you get high enough. I played and was winning 60% to 70% in ranked and have made it to the four star level. Suddenly I haven’t won a match in over 15 matches. I rebuilt my deck using new cards but I can not even get close. I noticed that some of the people (if they are people and not just bots) they seem to get loads of free cards whenever they run out. I was set up ready to win a match, my opponent had one card in hand I had 8 friends on the field and suddenly they played five cards to ensure they got more novas than me. Where did they come from? Oddly I had bloom the whole way through 7 rounds a friend they were still at 1 health at the 9th round. Never got hit once and still never increased. Every deck I have been playing against seems to have ALOT more than the ten cards available to them and gets the perfect card to make sure they can win. The random level to be energised obviously favours one player over another as quite often one player gets theirs chosen for et and over again. Fixed this and I feel it could be great but currently going to probably remove the game sooner rather than later. Do not waste your time until they do something about this or not afraid to lose all the time once you get to a particular level. Could be a 5 star though. ### 3/5 — Card design *2024-10-31, version 1.4.1* All the monster? Looks so similar and character are not attractive to me ### 4/5 — Almost perfect. *2024-10-03, version 1.3.0* This game has a lot of love and could be absolutely perfect. If it reduced the amount of RNG the game had, this would be one of the best “strategy card games” out there. It’s visually pleasing and satisfying. And the sound design is amazing. Even the characters theme music never gets old. If there was also a way to add friends or chat, that would make this game that much better. I’ve gotten some funny games which give a lot of personality and would love the option to speak to the person to get to know them. Overall this game is great. And can be even better. ### 3/5 — Pretty fun but unbalanced *2024-08-28, version 1.2.7* Kind of like Marvel Snap with a grid instead of 3 lanes and Hearthstone influence the card design. Overall it’s pretty fun, but the control and evolve cards from later pools are way overtuned. Between removal, cards that subtract your opponents score, evolve cards and cards that stop surrounding cards from activating/scoring there’s a lot of not so fun mechanics going on and you just have no agency with what you have in the board to do anything about it. It’s got that ultra grindy pool based unlock thing going on too. Cute art but can’t recommend the game as it is. ### 3/5 — So cute….but i’m left numb. *2024-08-23* So I want to start this out by saying that the character designs, art, concept- it’s all very cute. I really love the idea of this game! However, the gameplay itself is quite boring. I’ve played lots of different card builders, but it doesn’t feel as interesting in this game. If I had to guess, it’s the odd twist where in this game you’re racing to charge something to a capacity before your opponent using your cards. Something about this leaves me feeling bored, and left wanting to do something else. If I had a suggestion for this game it would be to overhaul the current battling system. It doesn’t feel competitive, and it doesn’t feel as though there’s any true strategy to it. People need some sort of challenge and this is just leaving me with a hole in my chest from boredom. It may sound harsh, but i’m writing this review BECAUSE I see the potential for this to become much better than it is now. It’s clear there’s a lot of love put into it, from the art, animation, and unique designs for each card. If the devs of this game see this, I hope they take this into stride and figure some way to make things more interesting. ### 3/5 — Severely unbalanced *2024-07-18* Nice idea and in general fun to play. However, the Boom cards, especially the leader, are way more powerful than the rest (energy and bloom the only other ones I've played so far), and the energy cards are by far the weakest. Also the fact that you have to "activate" cards with a separate and rare currency in order to get to use them is too much - the rate at which you get new cards to play after the initial jump is very slow because it becomes very costly to both acquire and activate them. ### 2/5 — Would be fun if I could play it. *2024-07-08, version 1.2.0* Game doesn’t load and it keep acting like I don’t have an internet connection. ### 5/5 — So good *2024-07-07, version 1.1.0* Such a fun game, and won that has clearly had so much love and care put into it - the design of the characters and skins is so fun innovative and clearly has so much passion and drive behind it!! Super fun, I’m addicted this summer :))) ### 5/5 — Must Play! *2024-06-23, version 1.1.0* This game is such a beautiful surprise! I downloaded this not knowing how much fun I was going to have, I kept telling myself “one more match” for about an hour ### 2/5 — annoyingly unbalanced *2024-06-20, version 1.1.0* title ### 5/5 — I love this game more than ever! *2024-06-09* I've been playing Nova Island since the start, and it just keeps getting better and better! There's no longer "too much rng" after the energizing update in Jan 2024 which allows strategically taking advantage of the board setup, and in April the 1.0 release brought a ton of new content and progression, filling out the delightful characters and world of the Island. The core of what I love about the game has been the same from the start - the engaging gameplay with lots of exciting moments and strategic back-and-forth, the supremely charming colorful world and incredible music, the adorable animations bringing the characters and creatures to life. It’s clear the game was made with love and playing it never fails to make me happy. I enjoy card games, but I don't like to stress about them, and I find Nova Island's gameplay is very accessible and fun to jump into, while also having plenty of strategic depth to dig into. The way you interact with the board and your opponent changes in interesting ways as you get new cards, and pros' superpowers make each game feel different and exciting. The other games modes like Turbo Draft and Central Circuit are their own fun challenge, too. There's a reason I've been playing Nova Island for years and telling everyone to try it, and recent updates have just made me love it more! I can't wait to see how it grows. ### 5/5 — Fantastic Gameplay and Art *2024-05-28* Absolutely love this game! The gameplay is fun and fast with fantastically cute characters that give this game so much unique character! It’s also free to play without all the annoying ads that usually come with that. Such a fun deck building game with great strategy and cute characters! Also the music is great! ### 5/5 — Captivating and Engaging *2024-05-18, version 1.0.6* Dan Perper’s creative genius at it again. This app is one of the only games I will use cloud space on. Can’t wait for more updates soon! ### 5/5 — Other developers should pay attention! *2024-04-25, version 1.0.4* Here are some neat things that Nova Island does that every other developer should learn from, and you don’t even need to know anything about the game. Number one, their news announcements are actually clear and useful! They explicitly say: here’s what we’re buffing, here’s what we’re nerfing, and here’s what we’re adjusting. Why can’t every game developer do that when they put out a new version? Another really neat thing is the spectate option, which lets you view the top players as they battle each other for the competitive top spots. You can see plainly what cards they use and what combinations they pull off. Really useful, and it takes away the mystery that exists in almost every other game with ranked battle systems. really cool features that other developers should learn from! Great game, nice art, cool music, smart developers! ### 4/5 — Love It just have 1 question *2024-04-18, version 1.0.4* Can you Guys as customisable characters or at least more characters!!!!! ### 5/5 — Highly underrated *2024-04-14* This game is one of the greatest things you can find on the AppStore. It’s engaging, strategic, and has something for everybody. There are a lot of reasons on why this game is so amazing, which I will now promptly cover. First of all, many of the reviews shown are very outdated, and most of them address the chance element of this game. However, a while back the devs released a huge update where they adapted the chance element to be more strategic, so take many older reviews with a grain of salt. However, one thing that has also not been addressed by these reviews is that the game now contains micro-transactions. Most of these are purely cosmetic while some will allow players to get ahead of the competition. The game is not pay to win though, due to the many rewards that are given by simply playing the game. The best thing about this game is the gameplay itself. It’s something unique that allows players to think strategically while having lots of fun. The animation is great, with a diverse selection of cards and characters to choose from. I recommend this game to any person, no matter what preferences an individual may have, Nova Island is a game made for everyone. ### 3/5 — Awesome, although fix it *2023-06-27, version 0.16.1* A great concept although All the gameplay is at my level, is get put up against a boom deck and lose, you have no chance of winning. Nerf boom or I quit. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — 30 fps *2024-11-30, version 1.4.2* Old game without 120 fps option, looks cheap ### 1/5 — RNG in the worst possible form *2022-01-26, version 0.8.0* Usually with card games like this there is always some form of RNG involved which is fine, as that’s the nature of card games. This game decides to take it to the extreme and make EVERYTHING RNG! This is literally just “gambling, the card game” Meaning I can already predict this game doesn’t survive long at all. There’s no way to express skill once you get to a certain level. Once you have a good deck it turns into picking four cards and hoping you get lucky simulator every single game. ### 1/5 — You need to make a balance patch on some characters and cards *2022-01-20, version 0.8.0* I hate this game because it’s unbalanced and the transform ability is very annoying and I can’t use certain cards and so I die because I give them a free turn and most of the fights I’m up against are people who are professionals with op cards. ### 1/5 — Rng *2022-01-09, version 0.8.0* Entire game based off of rng if you have one really bad round you lose the entire game ### 1/5 — The worst card game I have ever played *2022-01-08, version 0.8.0* Nova Island combines all of the worst aspects out of every card game and compiles them into a mess of a game. Before I even started a match, which is just locked on a ranked mode, which is an awful idea if you just downloaded the game (ranked is locked behind level in most games for a reason), the tutorial softlocked itself 3 times by telling me to make a deck when I already had one and kept looping until I uninstalled and reinstalled. The gameplay itself is awful, not only are you relying on the randomness of getting your cards, but the randomness of your cards actually working since every time has a % chance and isn’t reliable at all. The amount of times I’ve lost whilst on 90% and 85% chance tiles and the opponent wins on 10% and 20% is ridiculous. There’s absolutely no skill required since you’re at the mercy of the game’s multiple different RNG points so your decisions can just have no effect. If you want to play a card game, play Magic the Gathering or Legends of Runeterra. DON’T play this. ### 1/5 — bad gameplay *2021-12-23, version 0.8.0* cute graphics and aesthetics, but the gameplay is horrible. RNG ruins the game. also it is extremely unbalanced. dev team clearly doesn't play their own game. until major changes are made, the game is unenjoyable and therefore not worth playing. ### 1/5 — Random Squares is Not Fun *2021-12-21, version 0.8.0* RNG square activation makes for a terrible card game. To have 15 points on the board and get 9 points over two rounds and lose to someone with 10 points on board in lower percentage squares is garbage. ### 1/5 — Please just please *2021-11-05, version 0.7.1* Whenever I load into the game it go’s of within 20 to 30 seconds all I wanna do is play it same as the guy next to me.I thought this game was gonna be amazing but until it’s fixed I’ll have to wait respond if your awesome ### 1/5 — Change the name to DEFEAT Island. *2021-10-12* This game is genuinely rigged—not hyperbole. It’s not just poor RNG; it is NOT random at all. The pattern I have observed is that tile hits are more favorable to the higher ranking player. The odds of the 75% tile not hitting for 7 rounds in a row and the 90% tile not hitting 4 rounds in a row…while dancing around every single character I have on the board is a ridiculous way to lose. If you’ve got a character on the 90% tile that when energized snipes a random enemy character, but it doesn’t hit for 4 rounds in a row…and you lose the game…that’s more than suspicious. Aside from the impossible RNG and seemingly bot-like players, some of the actual deck types and cards are simply frustrating to play against. The pirate trainer can kill any card you play. I’ve played matches where the opponent sniped every character and I ran out of cards. It’s frustrating to put a card down and it being instantly destroyed by a seemingly unending chain of spell cards. What’s fun about that? The only good things I will say about this “game” is that it is free, ad-free, and the card characters are well drawn. That’s it. ### 1/5 — Do not download *2021-10-06, version 0.6.3* The RNG is abhorrent and the games ai may seem balanced at the start but becomes game breaking later. DO NOT DOWNLOAD UNLESS YOUR LOOKING FOR A BAD TIME. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Best Game Yet! *2026-02-26, version 1.8.7* I can’t believe it exists for so long and I’m just discovering it now, it’s really fun and doesn’t feel like it’s rushing you to pay to win, the art style is awesome and very appealing, just an overall great game that really makes you think…hope it will get the exposure it deserves ✌🏼 ### 5/5 — Lovely and fair *2025-12-06, version 1.8.6* Love this game, so unique , unlike any other card game have played, very fair and based on skill not on other factors ### 5/5 — Offline Version *2025-08-31, version 1.8.1* Will there be an offline version of this game in the future? I enjoy it a lot and would like an offline, paid, and full version of this game in case it ever gets taken off from the App Store in the future. ### 5/5 — Unbalanced? *2025-06-14* SUPER FUN GAME. I’ve played over 80 hours got all the classes unlocked. I’ve noticed that the cyber and distortion is highly abused (ranked matches just ppl spamming the specials not even creative decks just copy and paste) also let’s say I’m not good at the game I’ve made other decks & play all the classes if I’m not using the later cards or the later characters the starting three main characters can’t keep up. Also it maybe that I’m just running into alot of those players they seem to be the two main classes everyone uses. ### 5/5 — Not talked about enough *2025-03-13* I’ve been playing this game on and off over a few years on my iPad and it always took a while for me to get the hang of it, but I could tell there was something special about it. I recently started again and am surprised at how good it’s gotten. Great art, music, friendly style and gameplay- unique enough to standout as its own full bodied game to enjoy before bed or commuting .. and there are only 224 reviews??? This game is criminally underrated and I can only hope it gets bigger and better so more people can enjoy it. The tutorial levels are super helpful and I am finally getting into deck building. The UI is great, but could be a little easier to navigate. I would totally put nova island stickers on my laptop and water bottle. ### 5/5 — Cool game! But… *2025-02-19* I love playing this a little but I do make kooky sketches of that. One problem is that the people who play this may be threatened because of Executioner the Bird (Parrot?) and Mega Joe the Moxie Teddy holding a knife. Could you please remove the knife on the two? It may make us have some safe and peaceful gameplay without them having that. ### 5/5 — My favorite PvP card game of all time *2025-01-22* You're probably reading this because of some of the new sponsorships for this game, like FryEmUp. Let me tell you, this game is incredibly fun and consumer friendly. I've bounced around so many other card games (Pokemon Duel, Hearthstone, Soul of Eden, PvZH, South Park PD, Marvel Snap) and this hooked me in the fastest out of all of them. First off, despite the low player counts, the game still receives regular and major updates! New cards, balance changes, etc. It's made by a small indie team that still continues even though the game has had little attention for 3 years. Second, there's almost no gambling, lootbox, card pack, rarities, or dupe card mechanics. Once you reach enough player level, you directly buy a card with a plentiful currency. The only random aspect are occasional one time bundles of several different cards that become availible to buy at a level, with the bonus of one of those cards randomly given to you for free. Also, while reading these reviews you see many complaints from years ago. They actually addressed a lot of these in a big rework update in April 2024. For example, they added an entire story campaign with event battles! On a final note, the artstyle, soundtrack, and personality of this game is incredible. Nothing ever feels half-hearted or passionless, which is such a nice change compared to big cashgrabs from big companies. So what are you waiting for? I guarantee that just trying this for a few days will be a great time. ### 5/5 — This game is really solid and underrated (with issues) *2024-10-29* I love this game, got it from a friend and fell in love with it, the gameplay is simple and fun, but it’s not pay to win and there’s no annoying battle passes (keep it that way, plz) but yeah it’s solid, not a lot else to say other than some balance changes will be needed later down the line but yeah it’s a great game over all! ### 5/5 — Amazing, one of the best deck builders i’ve played! *2024-10-23* Hello! I’ve been playing Nova Island since pre-1.0 and I love it! I just wanted to say as a person who frequently gets intoxicated and plays mobile games at night, it’s a little hard to find the “my decks” option with the visual noise of the cards at the bottom of the UI! I think it may work better if it was another option up at the top to scroll to when you’re in the “My Stuff” tab OR if there was a bigger or colored outline around it? or if it wiggled a little bit? the other complaint is the constant bundle notifs. i very much wish that there weren’t little “buy these packs!” pop ups after every few level ups, i am tempted to compare it to YGO: Duel Links which has paid options but doesnt constantly notify the player of them through things you have to click an x on, but also i understand that this is an indie game and not everyone will be aware there even IS stuff you can buy from it. please consider giving these devs your support, they very much deserve it! ### 5/5 — Underrated *2024-08-05, version 1.2.5* More people need to invest their time in this game, ive been having a blast and i hope it gets the attention it needs, would hate to see it die off --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-03.*