Comparison

Moldvay's Labyrinth vs Cairn

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

Head to head
About

Moldvay's Labyrinth

Embark on a classic dungeon-crawling adventure inspired by 1970s and 80s CRPGs. Explore over 500 rooms, battle hundreds of unique monsters, and uncover countless treasures and secrets. Adjust the difficulty to your preference for a quick or extended play session.

Highlights
  • Over 500 rooms to explore
  • 300+ unique monsters
  • Hundreds of treasures and secrets
  • 80 spells and 15 character classes
  • Adjustable difficulty
  • No ads or interruptions
Read full description

You’ve just entered another world—a world of fabulous riches, unbridled sorcery, and certain doom. Over 300 monster types lie in wait, eager to kill your characters in dozens of exotic ways. Even if the monsters don’t get you, the traps lurking in every corridor almost certainly will. Moldvay’s Labyrinth is inspired by classic tabletop and CRPG games of the 1970s and 80s, including the Basic Edition of D&D (the “Red Book”), Wizardry, and Bronze Dragon on the Apple ][+ computer. It’s designed for fast, accessible play: • Jump in and explore for a minute or stay for hours • Adjustable difficulty: go breezy or brutally old-school • Play at your pace, with no ads or interruptions Explore a vast dungeon filled with: • 500+ rooms across dozens of hand-crafted levels • 300+ monsters, each with unique attacks and personalities • Hundreds of treasures, puzzles, and secrets • 80 spells and 15 unique character classes • Tons of weapons, armor, magic items, supplies, curses, and powerful relics This is a love letter to the golden age of dungeon crawling—packed with mystery, danger, and that elusive sense of discovery.

About

Cairn

This app serves as a player for classic text adventures, allowing you to bring your own story files. It automatically generates visual maps as you explore, offers a built-in notebook for notes, and supports attached reference materials like PDFs and images.

Highlights
  • Automatic live mapping
  • Session notebook saved with games
  • Support for Z-machine story files
  • Attached PDF and image materials
  • InvisiClues hint browsing
  • Customizable themes
Features
Read full description

Cairn is a player for classic text adventures. It does not include any games — you bring your own story files. Many classic and modern titles are available free from the Interactive Fiction Database and community archives. If you own Infocom games, Cairn plays those too. One app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, included with a single purchase. Your stories, saved games, materials, and the maps Cairn draws all travel with you through iCloud — begin an adventure on your Mac, continue it on your iPad, and check a hint on your phone. Unlike traditional interpreters, Cairn automatically builds a visual map of the world as you explore, so you can focus on puzzles and discovery instead of keeping graph-paper maps by hand. Cairn is a rich play desk for classic adventures. Attach your own PDFs and images to each story — manuals, maps, feelies, and other reference materials — then read them beside the game. PDFs include page navigation, single- and two-page layouts, and fit and zoom controls. Cairn also supports user-supplied InvisiClues hint files in a compatible JSON format. Hints appear in their own tab, grouped into booklet-style sections, and reveal one clue at a time. Every playthrough carries a notebook. Write down door codes, maze mappings, and the thing to come back to once you find the lamp, in a tab beside the story rather than on paper. A button drops in where you are, what you are carrying, your score, the move count, or the last thing you typed. Notes travel in the saved game, so restoring a save brings back what you knew at the time along with the map and the transcript. An at-a-glance inventory bar shows what you are carrying below the transcript, without typing an inventory command and without costing you a turn. The live map is flexible too: rooms take custom shapes, and you can hide or restore any of them. On iPhone and iPad the story takes the whole screen, and the map, your notes, and every attached document are one tap away. Readable themes include IBM PC Color and DEC VT241-inspired options. Cairn supports the complete classic Infocom Z3, Z4, and Z5 catalog, including Beyond Zork with its original on-screen map, stat bars, and character setup, and also plays Z-machine version 7 and version 8 stories, opening the door to modern Inform 6 and Inform 7 interactive fiction beyond the Infocom era. Version 6 graphical stories are not supported. Compatible adventures include classics such as Zork, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Planetfall, Enchanter, Trinity, Bureaucracy, Suspended, Deadline, Wishbringer, Spellbreaker, and many more. Features - A session notebook saved with each game - Automatic live mapping as you explore - Support for Z3, Z4, Z5, Z7, and Z8 story files - Beyond Zork's original screen, or a classic status line, at the flick of a switch - Attached PDF and image materials - PDF page navigation, layouts, fit, and zoom controls - Image zooming and scrolling - InvisiClues hint browsing from compatible JSON files - Spoiler-safe clue reveal controls - At-a-glance inventory bar - Adaptive side-panel tabs for maps, notes, PDFs, images, and hints - Custom room shapes, hidden rooms, and per-connection line routing, stroke, and labels - Separate map and text presentation options - Library management for your adventures - Tag your stories, then filter and search by tag, and group by tag or date - Add several stories at once, with covers and descriptions from the Interactive Fiction Database - One app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac with a single purchase - Stories, saved games, and materials synced across your devices with iCloud - Native menus and keyboard shortcuts on Mac and iPad - Layouts that adapt from iPhone to ultrawide displays IMPORTANT! Cairn does not include any game files, manuals, maps, images, or hint files. You supply your own from your personal collection or other legal distribution channels.

Screenshots

Moldvay's Labyrinth4 screens
Cairn4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Moldvay's Labyrinth at $4.99 against Cairn's $19.99. Moldvay's Labyrinth also leads on chart position (#182 vs unranked) and iOS requirement (10.0 vs 26.2). Cairn's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.5) and update cadence (every 5 days vs every 11 days). On review sentiment, ratings volume, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Moldvay's Labyrinth costs $4.99 and Cairn $19.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Cairn holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.5. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 15 and 10 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Moldvay's Labyrinth ships an update every 11 days, Cairn every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on November 4, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 6 level
Moldvay's Labyrinth versus Cairn: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMoldvay's LabyrinthCairn
Price$4.99 — better$19.99
Rating4.5 (15 ratings)5.0 (10 ratings) — better
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings15 — better10
Update frequencyEvery 11 daysEvery 5 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidPaid
Best chart rank#182 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS10.0 — better26.2
Further details — not scored
Size42 MB9 MB
Age rating9+4+
DeveloperCrossCut Games, Inc.Daniel Ducat

Customer experience

Moldvay's Labyrinth

All ratings15 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews10 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Cairn

All ratings10 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews8 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Moldvay's Labyrinth

No in-app purchases

None

Cairn

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Moldvay's Labyrinth free?
Moldvay's Labyrinth costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Cairn free?
Cairn costs $19.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Moldvay's Labyrinth or Cairn?
Cairn is rated higher. Moldvay's Labyrinth averages 4.5 out of 5 from 15 ratings, while Cairn averages 5.0 from 10 ratings.
Do Moldvay's Labyrinth or Cairn have ads?
Neither Moldvay's Labyrinth nor Cairn shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Moldvay's Labyrinth or Cairn?
Moldvay's Labyrinth ships an update every 11 days, and Cairn every 5 days. Most recently, Moldvay's Labyrinth was updated on November 4, 2026 and Cairn on November 5, 2026.

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