Comparison

Jump Jerboa vs Nova

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Jump Jerboa

Embark on a challenging minimalist platforming adventure as a desert rodent escaping a facility. Master one-touch controls across numerous handcrafted levels filled with deadly obstacles. Experience retro pixel art and chip-tune music in this unforgiving yet rewarding game.

Highlights
  • One-touch controls
  • Minimalist presentation
  • Handcrafted challenging levels
  • 99 levels
  • Portals and jump pads
  • Chip-tune music
  • Pixel art
Read full description

What are jerboas? Why, they're desert rodents that can REALLY jump! Trapped in a cage for much of your life, it's time to bust out and face adversity in Jump Jerboa, an unforgiving, minimalist one-button micro platformer! You will fail over and over, but in the end the freedom will be well worth the pain... right? Jump Jerboa is packed with challenging micro-levels. Play as a jerboa who must escape a facility filled with countless death traps. Jump Jerboa features: • One touch controls. Great for gaming on the go! • Minimalist presentation and gameplay! • Tough as nails, handcrafted levels! • 99 levels and more to come! • Several obstacle types including portals and jump pads! • Fancy chip-tune music! • Retro-induced pixel art! Jump Jerboa is a labor of love from a mostly solo game developer.

About

Nova

Command a star fleet in a real-time galactic conquest game. Engage in strategic battles, forge binding diplomatic contracts, and manage your empire efficiently. Play at your own pace, from quick sprints to long campaigns, with background notifications keeping you informed.

Highlights
  • Real-time galactic conquest
  • Binding diplomatic contracts
  • Fog of war for strategic depth
  • Customizable game pace and duration
  • Background notifications
  • Map editor for custom galaxies
Features
Read full description

You command one star at the edge of a contested galaxy, with a few hundred ships in the garrison and a clock counting down. Everything else is neutral, or held by a rival who wants it as badly as you do. Hold the most living stars when the mission timer ends and you win. Knock every rival out first, and you win early. Nova is a real-time space-strategy game of galactic conquest for two or more players. Every commander starts with exactly the same star, ships, and credits, so games are won by decisions, not dice. A war of decisions. You move under fog of war, seeing only what your own stars and scouts can reach, so a spy probe before an assault is often worth more than the ships it costs. The defender always holds the home-field edge, which means you have to outnumber a garrison by better than three to two just to fight to even odds. Capture stars, build factories, and your fleets and treasury compound together; spend on speed, range, or battle power and the advantage carries across your whole empire. Drop a nova bomb and a star is gone for good, which denies it to a rival but scores it for no one. Diplomacy you can hold someone to. Talk in-game on a global channel or in a private thread with a single commander. Then make it binding: a contract offers another player cash outright, or only if they send the fleet you ask for, to the star you name. The moment they accept, the cash moves and the fleet launches on their behalf, and it cannot be recalled. Alliances are only as good as the deals behind them, and here the deals actually stick. Set the pace yourself. A game's host decides how long it runs and how fast its clock turns. Spin up a one-hour sprint where production ticks every few seconds and the whole war is settled over a lunch break. Or stretch the same game over days or even weeks, a long campaign you think about between meetings and come back to when something shifts. Any player can propose a pause for sleep or work, and once a second player agrees, the whole game freezes, deadlines and all, until it resumes. Let it run in the background. You never have to keep the app open or refresh anything. Nova notifies your device when it actually matters: a star of yours under attack, a shield that just blocked a spy probe, a fleet that reached its target, a message from a rival, a pause proposal, the game kicking off. Leave a slow game running for days and you will not lose the thread. Less micromanagement, more strategy. Fleets route themselves through your territory, so you can strike far beyond a single jump without plotting every hop. Standing orders turn a safe rear star into a supply pump: keep a garrison, forward the surplus, and reinforcements march to the front on their own while you think about the next move. Build your own galaxies in the map editor and play them with friends, or drop into a balanced Risk-style world for two to six commanders. Play from your iPhone, iPad or a browser against the same opponents; a game runs identically whether you join from iOS or the web.

Screenshots

Jump Jerboa4 screens
Nova4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Nova at none against Jump Jerboa's 1. Nova also leads on ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (weekly vs every 2 months). Jump Jerboa's advantage is ratings volume (476 vs 2) and iOS requirement (11.0 vs 16.4). On price, rating 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Jump Jerboa sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Nova asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Nova holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Jump Jerboa has 476 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Jump Jerboa ships an update every 2 months, Nova weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 1, 2026 and September 26, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Jump Jerboa versus Nova: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterJump JerboaNova
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (476 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews92.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings476 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsWeekly — better
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS11.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size23 MB51 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperYong Kian ChinKevin Gilpin

Customer experience

Jump Jerboa

All ratings476 ratings
Positive95.8%
Neutral1.3%
Negative2.9%
Written reviews276 reviews
Positive92.0%
Neutral1.1%
Negative6.9%

Nova

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Jump Jerboa

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • Levels sometimes reset progress unexpectedly
  • Difficulty spikes in certain world transitions

Requested features

4 requests
  • More levels and worlds to explore
  • Ability to customize the character
  • Leaderboards or achievements system
  • Level editor or community-created content

Nova

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Jump Jerboa

One-time1
  • Ad Removal + Tiny companion$1.99
None

Nova

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Jump Jerboa free?
Jump Jerboa is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Nova free?
Nova is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Jump Jerboa or Nova?
Nova is rated higher. Jump Jerboa averages 4.8 out of 5 from 476 ratings, while Nova averages 5.0 from 2 ratings.
Do Jump Jerboa or Nova have ads?
Jump Jerboa shows ads; Nova does not.
Which is updated more often, Jump Jerboa or Nova?
Jump Jerboa ships an update every 2 months, and Nova weekly. Most recently, Jump Jerboa was updated on September 1, 2026 and Nova on September 26, 2026.

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