Card Thief vs Uncommon Chess
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Card Thief
A solitaire-style stealth game where you play as a master thief. Sneak through darkness, steal treasure, and escape without getting caught. It offers deep strategy and roguelike replayability in short, engaging sessions.
- Solitaire-style stealth gameplay
- 4 unique heists
- Unlockable equipment cards
- Hireable thieves with special rules
- Mini deck-building mechanics
- Daily Heist mode with leaderboards
- Roguelike replayability
- Offline play
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Card Thief is a solitaire-style stealth card game that transforms your deck into a shadowy world of cunning heists and daring escapes. Sneak through the darkness as a master thief. Extinguish torches, pickpocket guards, and steal precious treasure without getting caught. Every card you flip is a calculated risk. Every move could be your last. From the makers of Card Crawl, the hit indie card dungeon crawler, Card Thief distills the tension of classic stealth games into a sleek, strategic card game you can play in minutes. Easy to learn, endlessly deep. Plan. Steal. Escape. Repeat. With a rich layer of tactical decision-making, risk/reward choices, and roguelike replayability, Card Thief is the perfect pick-up-and-play strategy card game for fans of stealth, puzzle games, and solo card games alike. Features - Solitaire-style stealth gameplay with no internet required - 4 unique heists with distinct enemies, traps, and obstacles - 12 unlockable and upgradable equipment cards with unique abilities - Hire 10 thieves, each with special gameplay rules - Mini deck-building mechanics for deep strategic customization - Daily Heist mode with global leaderboards - Roguelike replayability so every run plays differently - Perfect session length of 2 to 3 minutes per game - Offline play, great for travel
Uncommon Chess
Experience chess with unique animated duels for every capture. Learn the game with interactive tutorials, play against AI or friends, and explore fun novelty modes. Dive into a study of chess games with clear explanations.
- Animated capture duels
- Interactive learning tutorials
- AI and local multiplayer
- Online 1v1 and 2v2 modes
- Novelty game modes
- Chess game study and analysis
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Chess, but the pieces fight for the square. Every capture in Uncommon Chess is a hand-animated duel between two original characters — the ivory Bone Court against the blued iron of the Iron Court. Thirty-five of them, one for every attacker and defender pairing, each choreographed separately. A pawn taking a rook does not look like a queen taking a pawn. LEARN TO PLAY A whole screen for somebody who has never played. How each piece moves, shown on a real board, plus the rules that look like exceptions — check, checkmate, stalemate, castling, en passant, promotion. The diagrams are played by the game's own rules engine, so they cannot be wrong. SEE IT YOUR WAY Turn the board, tilt it, zoom in. Watch the fight from wherever you like. PLAY HOW YOU LIKE Against the computer at four strengths. Two players passing one device. Four players, two a side. Or online through Game Center — 1v1 and 2v2, with your turn waiting for you whenever you pick the phone up. FUN MODES Optional novelty rules for a single match. Anoint a Champion that survives the first attack on it, a Berserker that strikes twice, or a Phantom that slips through anything in its way. Strict chess is the default, is complete, and costs nothing. THE MATRIX A real study of 162,000 games between two engines, and — unusually — a plain explanation of what its numbers mean. What a margin of error is. Why more games help only slowly. What the experiment cannot tell you. Written for a child and true for everybody. No account. No subscription. No data collected.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Uncommon Chess at none against Card Thief's 1. Uncommon Chess also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 70%) and update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 4 months). Card Thief's advantage is ratings volume (997 vs 1) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 15.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Card Thief sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Uncommon Chess asks for nothing beyond the download.
Uncommon Chess holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Card Thief has 997 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 70% of Card Thief's written reviews are positive against 100% of Uncommon Chess's.
Card Thief ships an update every 4 months, Uncommon Chess every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Card Thief | Uncommon Chess |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (997 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 69.9% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 997 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 4 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | Yes | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Ad-supported — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 161 MB | 35 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Arnold Rauers | TAMAS HALASZ |
Customer experience
Card Thief
Uncommon Chess
Bugs and requests
Card Thief
Reported bugs
9 issues- Crystals which you can get when playing are useless
- Notch covers game information on iPhone X+
- Ads error prevents chest opening
- Hideout heists have unrealistically high scores
- Can't open hideout, game crashes
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- Crashes right after starting on M1 iPad Pro with iPadOS 14.7.1
- Crashes all the time
- Login screen freezes
- Incompatible with older devices
Requested features
9 requests- More enemies or traps to deal with
- More equipment to try out
- 4x4 layout rather than 3x3
- Endless mode
- Multiplayer compatibility
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- Sync game data between Android and iOS
- Shop to use crystals
- More levels, incentives, and variations in the Hideout games
- Ability to cash in stolen goods for new tool cards or special cards
Uncommon Chess
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Card Thief
- Unlock Card Thief$4.99
Uncommon Chess
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Card Thief free?
Is Uncommon Chess free?
Which has better reviews, Card Thief or Uncommon Chess?
Do Card Thief or Uncommon Chess have ads?
Which is updated more often, Card Thief or Uncommon Chess?
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