Visual Pinball vs Skyliner
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Visual Pinball
Enjoy a realistic pinball simulation with hundreds of community-created tables. Experience immersive haptic feedback and customize your gameplay with intuitive settings and controller support. Advanced options are available for power users.
- Hundreds of community-developed tables
- Haptic feedback for immersive gameplay
- Customizable settings and POV adjustments
- Game controller support
- External DMD and AltColor/AltSound support
- Touch overlay and instructions
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The official Visual Pinball app. Built by volunteers since 2000 and open source since 2010, Visual Pinball is the simulator the virtual pinball community has been playing for over two decades. More than 70 people have contributed to it, and this app runs the same engine as the desktop version, so every table plays with the physics, lighting and sound its creator intended. No ads. No in-app purchases. No tracking. Made by volunteers. Two years of work from the Visual Pinball volunteers, in one update. Thank you for your patience, and for playing! A FRESH NEW LOOK • Redesigned for iOS 26 with Liquid Glass • Favorites and recently played tables at the top of your list • Search, sorting and three tile sizes • Light, Dark or System appearance • New loading screen that shows progress THE FULL DESKTOP EXPERIENCE • The complete Visual Pinball in-game menu for graphics, sound, controls and table options • Remap every button on keyboards and game controllers • Save settings for every table, or just the one you're playing MORE TABLES, LOOKING BETTER • Show the backglass and score display (DMD, alphanumeric or reels) on screen, right where you want them • Support for PUP packs, FlexDMD, B2S backglasses, video playback and VNI colorizations • All the latest physics and rendering improvements from the desktop version • Much lower memory use: textures are compressed on first load, then cached EASIER TABLE MANAGEMENT • Import .zip files, along with .vpx and .vpxz • Share any table as a single .vpxz file • The web file manager can now upload whole folders, extract archives, edit scripts and settings, and show the log live AND MORE • Many stability and memory fixes This version requires iOS 26.6 or later.
Skyliner
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A crane swings a floor on a cable. Tap once, and let go at exactly the right moment. Land it dead centre and residents parachute in under umbrellas, your streak climbs, and the tower stays plumb. Land it badly and it leans - and every floor after that gets harder, because a tower that is already crooked sways further, and the block you are aiming at will not sit still. Stack too far over one edge and it does what it should: it comes down. BUILD YOUR CITY Every finished tower gets placed on a city grid, and each new contract comes with a rule about what it has to be built next to. Blue residential, red commercial, green office, gold luxury - and, once you have earned the room, a Mega Tower that has to be hemmed in by all four. Fill all twenty plots and a new district opens, with its own sky, its own ground and its own skyline. FOUR WAYS TO PLAY • Build City - the campaign. Contracts, neighbours, districts. • Endless - one tower, as high as you can take it. • Time Attack - sixty seconds. A perfect drop buys two more; a miss costs five. • Versus - two players on one phone. The screen splits, and the top half turns around so you can sit opposite each other. EARNED, NOT BOUGHT Four perfect drops in a row earn a balcony floor that houses twice as many people. Top out with most of your floors dead centre and the building gets a trophy roof. Coins go to the depot for a spare crane, a steadier cable, or a wind anchor. THE CLIMB Start at noon on a building site and keep going. The sky moves through afternoon, sunset and night, the city lights come on beneath you, and the wind starts to matter somewhere around the fortieth floor. Every sprite is drawn in code and every sound is synthesised - nothing here is a stock asset. No ads. No timers. No pop-ups asking you to wait.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Visual Pinball at Free against Skyliner's $1.99. Skyliner's advantage is update cadence (every 2 days vs every 12 months) and iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.6). On ads, in-app purchases 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
Visual Pinball is free to download; Skyliner costs $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Visual Pinball ships an update every 12 months, Skyliner every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Visual Pinball | Skyliner |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $1.99 |
| Rating | 4.3 (73 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 78.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 73 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 12 months | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.6 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 120 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jason Millard | Novarch LLC |
Bugs and requests
Visual Pinball
Reported bugs
2 issues- Tables don't load for some users
- Certain complex/intensive tables error out or run at low FPS
Requested features
6 requests- List of most played tables
- Ability to reposition DMD
- Option to skip startup checks for some tables
- Ability to edit table scripts on the app
- Direct link to table depository
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- iPad version with more screen space
Skyliner
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Visual Pinball
No in-app purchases
Skyliner
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Visual Pinball free?
Is Skyliner free?
Do Visual Pinball or Skyliner have ads?
Which is updated more often, Visual Pinball or Skyliner?
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