Paint Sponges vs Popup Panic
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Paint Sponges
Engage your mind with a relaxing yet challenging color-mixing puzzle game. Solve intricate puzzles to achieve the correct hues and unwind with this brain-exercising experience.
- Color mixing puzzles
- Brain exercise
- Relaxing gameplay
- Challenging levels
- Fun and chill experience
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Challenging and relaxing puzzle game! Can you solve it to get the right color? Exercise your brain in this fun & chill game!
Popup Panic
Navigate the chaotic early internet by finding the single real close button among deceptive pop-up ads and fake links. Race against the clock and avoid risky windows to achieve high scores and climb global leaderboards.
- Find the real close button
- Beat the clock
- 12 parody internet sites
- Global leaderboard
- Combo and speed bonuses
- Risky pop-up avoidance
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ARE YOU AN INTERNET VETERAN? Before broadband. Before ad blockers. Before you knew better. Popup Panic drops you back into the internet's most dangerous era — a world of pop-up ads, fake close buttons, and "You are the 1,000,000th visitor!" banners screaming for your click. Somewhere in the wreckage is the one real close button. Everything else is a trap. FIND THE REAL X Every ad hides exactly one genuine close button. The rest are decoys — fake corners, flashy clones, buttons that only reveal themselves if you hover first, and windows with two identical X's where only one actually works. Guess wrong and it costs you. BEAT THE CLOCK, NOT JUST THE AD Some close buttons are locked behind a countdown, exactly like the real thing. Others disguise themselves as "Skip Ad" buttons or hide inside fake video players stacked three ads deep — close one and another loads right behind it. Speed and accuracy both feed your score, so the faster and cleaner you clear a level, the higher you climb. 12 SITES, 12 ERAS OF INTERNET HISTORY Every level drops you into a different rebuilt-from-memory site parody: a homepage permanently "under construction," a profile page with a Top 8, a file-sharing client full of suspicious downloads, an early video-sharing grid, an inbox buried in spam, a search engine that actually tries to help, and more. Twelve total, rotating every level. REAL RISK, REAL STAKES Click the wrong ad, and a new window might pop up that you really don't want on screen when someone walks by. You'll have seconds to close it before the run ends. CLIMB THE RANKS AND CHASE PERFECTION Chain combos, clear levels without a single mistake for bonus points, and race the clock for a speed bonus on top. Work your way up from "Newbie" to "Internet Sensei," and compete on a real, live global leaderboard against everyone else who thinks they remember what the early internet was actually like. Popup Panic is a love letter to — and a little bit of revenge against — the worst UX decade in internet history. Nobody who survived it will ever forget. Question is: did you actually survive it, or did you just get lucky?
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Popup Panic at 100% against Paint Sponges's 50%. Popup Panic also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Paint Sponges's advantage is ratings volume (4.1K vs 1). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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. Paint Sponges sells 8 one-off in-app purchases and Popup Panic sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Popup Panic holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Paint Sponges has 4.1K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 50% of Paint Sponges's written reviews are positive against 100% of Popup Panic's.
Paint Sponges ships an update fortnightly, Popup Panic every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 23, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Paint Sponges | Popup Panic |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (4.1K ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 4.1K — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Every 8 days — better |
| Ads | Yes | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 213 MB | 12 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 4+ |
| Developer | App Swim LLC | Chadrick Dizon |
Customer experience
Paint Sponges
Popup Panic
In-app purchases
Paint Sponges
- Infinity Heart$0.99
- Coins Pack 1$1.99
- Coins Pack 2$7.99
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- Ad Free$7.99
- Coins Pack 3$14.99
- Coins Pack 4$24.99
- Coins Pack 5$54.99
- Coins Pack 6$99.99
Popup Panic
- Remove Ads$1.99









