Jump Jerboa vs Nova
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- One-touch controls
- Minimalist presentation
- Handcrafted challenging levels
- 99 levels
- Portals and jump pads
- Chip-tune music
- Pixel art
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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.
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.
- 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
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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
Verdict
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
Both are free to download. Jump Jerboa sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Nova asks for nothing beyond the download.
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.
Jump Jerboa ships an update every 2 months, Nova weekly. The most recent releases landed on September 1, 2026 and September 26, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Jump Jerboa | Nova |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (476 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 92.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 476 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Weekly — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 11.0 — better | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 23 MB | 51 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Yong Kian Chin | Kevin Gilpin |
Customer experience
Jump Jerboa
Nova
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
Jump Jerboa
- Ad Removal + Tiny companion$1.99
Nova
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Jump Jerboa free?
Is Nova free?
Which has better reviews, Jump Jerboa or Nova?
Do Jump Jerboa or Nova have ads?
Which is updated more often, Jump Jerboa or Nova?
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