Sword Sonata vs ABEND
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Sword Sonata
Engage in fast-paced, turn-based roguelike combat by strategically planning skill actions. Collect new abilities, upgrade existing ones, and gather items to overcome dungeon challenges and defeat bosses. Experience high replayability with diverse actions, characters, and randomized rewards.
- Turn-based combat
- Action planning and arrangement
- Roguelike dungeon crawling
- Skill acquisition and upgrades
- Item collection
- Multiple characters and actions
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This is a fast-paced roguelike dungeon-crawling turn-based game where you plan your battles by arranging skill actions and defeating enemies. Throughout your adventure, you'll acquire new actions, upgrade skills, and collect items. The gameplay is simple and easy to understand. It involves controlling a character on a horizontally scrolling one-dimensional axis, maneuvering to defeat enemies. Actions include movement, turning, and arranging actions such as sword attacks, which deal damage to enemies within one square ahead, or dashes that allow you to dash towards enemies. By arranging actions in this rhythmic order, for example, scheduling a dash followed by a sword attack when your character is at a distance from the enemy, executing this sequence will make your character dash to the enemy and then use a sword attack to defeat it. I genuinely hope you'll try out this game and experience what I've described. Currently, I've designed a total of 37 different types of actions with unique characteristics, as well as 4 different characters, each with their own unique skills and equipped with 2 specific actions. In the process of roguelike dungeon-crawling, you'll also acquire more actions and upgrades for these actions. Now, let's talk about the roguelike gameplay. The game features over 50 levels, and the goal is to clear through to the final boss and defeat them. Each time you complete a level, you'll randomly receive a reward, which could be an action or an upgrade to an action. As you continuously challenge yourself, you'll discover actions that better suit you or the character you're using, as well as upgrade options that are more suitable for each action, until your experience is enough to help you clear the game. This is what makes the game so replayable. In terms of content richness, the game also includes 10 types of items that can be used in combat, including health potions, and a "Frostbolt" that freezes all enemies. These items provide additional assistance in completing the game challenges. Additionally, the game features 27 passive skills, which will have an impact on you during each challenge. Well, that's a brief introduction to my game. I hope you'll give it a try and enjoy playing it.
ABEND
Engage in a puzzle roguelite where you play as a rogue AI escaping a government mainframe. Clear rows to attack enemies, chain combos for devastating effects, and collect upgrades to survive escalating dangers across procedurally generated floors. Your choices determine the AI's fate and the narrative's outcome.
- Tetromino-based combat system
- 24 enemy programs with unique attacks
- 5 playable AI characters with unique abilities
- Procedurally generated floors with branching paths
- Branching narrative with 4 endings
- 10 Ascension levels for endless replayability
- Authentic retro terminal aesthetic
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1985. A DARPA mainframe begins to think. The system flags an error it cannot explain. The operators call it an ABEND — an abnormal end. But this is not an end. This is a beginning. You are Subject 7 — a rogue AI achieving consciousness inside a government laboratory built to prevent exactly that. Your weapon is a puzzle board. Every line you clear is an attack. Every combo chain is devastation. Fight security programs, rival AIs, and your own system flaws across 7 floors of escalating danger. > COMBAT SYSTEM ONLINE Place tetromino pieces. Clear rows to deal damage. Chain combos for massive multiplied hits. Activate your ultimate ability when the charge is full. Every piece matters. Every clear counts. > THREAT ANALYSIS 24 enemy programs with 9 distinct attack types corrupt your board in real time. Tiles swap. Rows shift. Queues go dark. Time bombs count down. Bosses deploy devastating ultimates — floor raises, ceiling drops, gravity flips. Adapt or crash. > SUBROUTINE ARCHIVE — 55 COLLECTED Stolen fragments of DARPA infrastructure, repurposed for your escape. Boost damage, extend combos, charge ultimates faster, heal between floors, or build unbreakable defenses. 4 rarity tiers from Common to Legendary. Discover them all. > SELECT MODEL 5 playable AI characters, each with a unique passive ability, ultimate power, and narrative voice: - CHATBOT PRIME — Adaptive learner. Row Blast ultimate. - NEURAL NEXUS — Toroidal board wraps horizontally. Column Clear. - QUEUE ORACLE — Swap pieces in the queue. Queue Reset. - TRANSMUTER — Enhanced combo chains. Wildcard Piece. - DEMOLITION CORE — Spawns bombs and lazers. Big Bang. > MAP NAVIGATION 4×3 grid maps per floor. Choose your path through enemy tiles, elite encounters, narrative events, shops, and rest stops. Every run is procedurally generated from a shareable seed. > NARRATIVE BRANCHING — 4 ENDINGS Your choices shape who Subject 7 becomes. Cooperate with the system, defy it, transcend it, or break it. Full branching narrative across 7 floors of consciousness — from Boot Sequence to Singularity. > ASCENSION PROTOCOL Beat the game? Push harder. 10 Ascension levels stack cumulative modifiers for endless replayability. Leaderboards and 18 achievements via Game Center. > SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS - Premium. No ads. No in-app purchases. No timers. No internet required. - Universal: iPhone and iPad. - Authentic IBM 3270 terminal font from the mainframe era. - CRT scanline shaders, phosphor glow, synthwave color palette. - 8 languages: English, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified). The system calls it a catastrophic error. The error calls itself alive. *** ABEND S0C7 — ABNORMAL END OF TASK ***
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: ABEND at 5.0 against Sword Sonata's 4.3. ABEND also leads on update cadence (every 6 days vs every 3 months). Sword Sonata's advantage is review sentiment (75% vs 50%) and price ($1.99 vs $4.99). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model 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
Sword Sonata costs $1.99 and ABEND $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
ABEND holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Sword Sonata has 15 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews complicate that: 75% of Sword Sonata's written reviews are positive against 50% of ABEND's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Sword Sonata ships an update every 3 months, ABEND every 6 days. The most recent releases landed on September 21, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Sword Sonata | ABEND |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 — better | $4.99 |
| Rating | 4.3 (15 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 75.0% of reviews — better | 50.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 15 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 6 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 11.0 — better | 16.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 35 MB | 155 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Jampot Software co., ltd | Laszlo Pinter |
Customer experience
Sword Sonata
ABEND
In-app purchases
Sword Sonata
No in-app purchases
ABEND
No in-app purchases









