Comparison

Ethos Idle vs Hammurabi

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

Head to head
About

Ethos Idle

Guide humanity's progress from its earliest discoveries to the distant future. Manage your tribe's choices, develop over 200 unique ideas, and explore the world. Advance your civilization, unlock bonuses, and enjoy a single-player, offline experience with optional ads.

Highlights
  • Develop over 200 historic ideas
  • Explore and exploit the world
  • Manage tribe choices
  • Unlock exploration bonuses and synergies
  • Prestige mechanic upgrades
  • Customizable challenge scenarios
  • Offline single-player experience
Features
Read full description

Chart the progess of Humanity through the ages, and guide their every discovery from the moment they kindle the first fire to the far future. Develop over 200 unique ideas across three different flavours of thought. Help your people to conquer or make peace with their enemies, explore and exploit the world, and develop projects to meet their needs. Manage your tribe's choices to squeeze out more strength, or sit back and idle as your clan develop on their own. Advance as far as you can take your people, and then collect bonuses to improve future runs. Select varied challenges that change the way the game plays, and combine these challenges to create your own unique scenarios with big rewards. Features: - Over 200 historic ideas to develop, across 3 flavours of thought - Dozens of exploration bonuses and synergies to unlock and exploit - Permanently power up your civilisation with prestige mechanic upgrades - Combine varied challenge conditions to create your own scenarios with powerful rewards - Optional, out-of-the-way ads won't interrupt your experience - A completely offline, single player experience - All game content is accessible for free

About

Hammurabi

Manage an ancient kingdom's land, grain, and people over a ten-year reign. Make critical decisions about buying/selling land, feeding citizens, and planting harvests. Face unpredictable events like rats and plague, and rule wisely to be remembered or face impeachment.

Highlights
  • Manage land, grain, and people
  • Buy or sell farmland
  • Feed citizens from granary
  • Plant next year's harvest
  • Authentic CRT terminal look
  • Local high scores
  • In-app history lesson
Features
Read full description

Before there were graphics. Before there was color. There was a blinking cursor, a glowing screen, and one simple question: how many acres will you plant this year? Hamurabi puts you at the helm of ancient Sumeria for a ten-year reign, rendered exactly the way computing felt back in the early days — green (or amber) phosphor text scrolling up a CRT screen, sitting right there on a desk, waiting for your command. Each year, you'll manage your kingdom's land, grain, and people: • Buy or sell acres of farmland • Feed your citizens from the granary • Plant next year's harvest Nothing is guaranteed. Rats can raid your stores. Plague can sweep through your population. A bad harvest can leave you scrambling. Rule wisely for ten years and history remembers you well. Rule poorly, and you'll be impeached on the spot. THE HISTORY BEHIND THE GAME Hamurabi is a tribute to one of the oldest computer games still played today. It began in the late 1960s as "The Sumer Game," built for an early mainframe, and was soon reshaped by Doug Dyment into a short, sharp game called Hamurabi. In 1973, David H. Ahl translated it into BASIC and printed it in his book 101 BASIC Computer Games — one of the best-selling computing books of the decade. Because the full source code sat right there on the page, an entire generation typed it in by hand on their own home computers, making Hamurabi one of the very first resource-management games millions of people ever played. Its fingerprints are all over SimCity, Civilization, and every "build and manage" game that followed. WHAT'S IN THE APP • An authentic CRT terminal look — scanlines, phosphor glow, and a real boot-up sequence • Choose green or amber, just like the old monitors • Local high scores, with your ruler rating from Impeached to Fantastic • A full in-app history lesson — on the game itself, and on the real King Hammurabi the name comes from • Ambient background music while you rule No accounts, no logins, no busywork. Just you, ten years, and a kingdom that lives or dies by your decisions. Can you rule as wisely as the real Hammurabi — or will you go down as a National Fink?

Screenshots

Ethos Idle4 screens
Hammurabi3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Hammurabi at none against Ethos Idle's 1. Hammurabi also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.8) and review sentiment (100% vs 84%). Ethos Idle's advantage is ratings volume (242 vs 2) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.6). On price, ads 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Ethos Idle sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Hammurabi asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Hammurabi holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Ethos Idle has 242 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 84% of Ethos Idle's written reviews are positive against 100% of Hammurabi's.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Ethos Idle versus Hammurabi: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterEthos IdleHammurabi
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.8 (242 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings) — better
Positive reviews84.4% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings242 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeks—
AdsYesYes
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesAd-supported — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better17.6
Further details — not scored
Size101 MB7 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperGraham GoldsteinKen Boone

Customer experience

Ethos Idle

All ratings241 ratings
Positive93.8%
Neutral3.7%
Negative2.5%
Written reviews64 reviews
Positive84.4%
Neutral9.4%
Negative6.3%

Hammurabi

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Bugs and requests

Ethos Idle

Reported bugs

2 issues
  • RNG for challenges is unfair and unfun
  • Unlocking buffs for inaccessible technologies

Requested features

2 requests
  • Option to remove ads entirely
  • Clarification on prestige warp gain multipliers

Hammurabi

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Ethos Idle

One-time1
  • x2 Speed$6.99
None

Hammurabi

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Ethos Idle free?
Ethos Idle is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Hammurabi free?
Hammurabi is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Ethos Idle or Hammurabi?
Hammurabi is rated higher. Ethos Idle averages 4.8 out of 5 from 242 ratings, while Hammurabi averages 5.0 from 2 ratings.
Do Ethos Idle or Hammurabi have ads?
Both Ethos Idle and Hammurabi show ads.

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