Comparison

Bitmap Bay vs The Completionist

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

Head to head
About

Bitmap Bay

Embark on a retro pirate adventure with a handcrafted pixel art world. Engage in skillful cannon battles, face legendary captains, and recruit your crew in this roguelite experience. Enjoy endless replayability with a full save system, playable completely offline.

Highlights
  • Handmade pixel art
  • Challenge legendary pirates
  • Endlessly replayable voyages
  • Skillful cannon battles
  • Recruit your crew
  • Full save and load system
Features
Read full description

"A bold new retro take... quite the intriguing one" – Pocket Gamer. Welcome to Bitmap Bay - a pixel-art pirate adventure. Explore the low-res high seas, build your legacy, and test your cannon-firing reflexes against legendary historical captains. • Authentic Pixel Art: A charming, low-res retro world created by an artist. • Legendary Pirates: Challenge over 40 real historical captains, each with unique, hand-drawn portraits. • Tactical Cannon Battles: Combat is simple to learn but hard to master. Time your shots perfectly to claim victory. • Recruit Your Crew: Hire a loyal crew of sailors, specialists, and scoundrels. • Endlessly Replayable: Encounter a wide range of random events – duels, storms, thieves, and mysteries. • Premium Experience: Playable completely offline with zero ads and zero in-app purchases. About the Developer: Bitmap Bay is the creation of Grandom Games, the solo dev studio of a visual artist and designer. It is built with a passion for classic retro gaming and offered as a true premium mobile experience.

About

The Completionist

Manage a 1980s pop culture magazine, hiring staff and commissioning stories. Navigate deadlines and finances with a retro aesthetic and a Kanban workflow. Your choices impact the magazine's success and unlock new narrative quests.

Highlights
  • Run a 1980s pop culture magazine
  • Hire writers, editors, and researchers
  • Kanban workflow for story management
  • Retro pixel art and sound design
  • Thousands of 1980s headlines
  • Prestige system for permanent upgrades
  • Narrative quests and story progression
Features
Read full description

Run a scrappy pop culture magazine through the golden age of print. Hire writers, editors, and researchers. Commission stories about the movies, music, games, and news that defined the 1980s. Move work across a Kanban board from idea to published think piece. Try not to go broke. It's 1980. MTV hasn't launched. Keyboards click and coffee brews and nobody's heard the word "Internet." You just have tight deadlines, a small team, and a whole decade of pop culture to write about. Part strategy game. Part idle. Part workflow sim. Part love letter to the 1980s. WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT * Your Choices Matter — Build a team of specialists or balanced generalists. Rush stories to hit deadlines for the bonus, or slow down and chase 5-star quality for the milestone payout. Hire aggressively and spend yourself thin, or run lean and invest in equipment. Prestige early with a handful of legacy points, or grind deeper for a bigger haul. Every run surfaces a new question. * Old School Aesthetic — Commodore 64 color palette, pixel art sprites, and sounds. It looks like it crawled out of a floppy disk. In a good way. * Thousands of 1980s Headlines — Empire Strikes Back opening weekend. The NES launch. Live Aid. The Challenger disaster. The stuff that shaped a generation. * Kanban Workflow — Research, draft, create, edit, publish. Manage stories across the board like a project manager who's really into Depeche Mode. * Build Your Team — Creators write. Editors catch typos. Researchers break down leads. Project Managers keep the whole operation from falling apart. Hire smart, level up skills, and equip your crew with keyboards, desks, and headphones. * Prestige System — Hit $300K and complete a Volume. Start your next run with permanent legacy upgrades that pull your strategy in different directions. Revenue Boost or Inflation Shield. Quality Boost or Fast Learners. There's no correct order. There's your order. Each Volume is faster, deeper, and harder to put down. * Speed Boosts — Coffee, pizza, donuts. The fuel of journalism. Buy consumables for a temporary push. Buy an office dog for permanent motivation. * Narrative Quests — Story-driven progression through your magazine's rise across the decade. Not just numbers going up — a real arc. * NO ADS. NO ENERGY GATES. One optional speed boost. That's it. The first Volume teaches you the mechanics. Volumes 2 through 10 are where you discover what kind of editor you actually are.

Screenshots

Bitmap Bay4 screens
The Completionist4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Bitmap Bay at none against The Completionist's 1. Bitmap Bay also leads on review sentiment (83% vs 69%) and price ($0.99 vs $1.99). The Completionist's advantage is rating (4.7 vs 4.3). On ratings volume, update cadence, ads and monetization model 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

Bitmap Bay costs $0.99 and The Completionist $1.99 up front. The Completionist sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Bitmap Bay asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

The Completionist holds the better App Store score, 4.7 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 8 and 6 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 83% of Bitmap Bay's written reviews are positive against 69% of The Completionist's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Bitmap Bay ships an update every 4 days, The Completionist every 3 days. Both last shipped on November 5, 2026.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
Bitmap Bay versus The Completionist: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBitmap BayThe Completionist
Price$0.99 — better$1.99
Rating4.3 (8 ratings)4.7 (6 ratings) — better
Positive reviews82.9% of reviews — better69.2% of reviews
Number of ratings8 — better6
Update frequencyEvery 4 daysEvery 3 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaidPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size102 MB20 MB
Age rating12+12+
DeveloperNICHOLAS GENTRYFrosty Pop

Customer experience

Bitmap Bay

All ratings8 ratings
Positive87.5%
Neutral0.0%
Negative12.5%
Written reviews35 reviews
Positive82.9%
Neutral5.7%
Negative11.4%

The Completionist

All ratings5 ratings
Positive80.0%
Neutral20.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews13 reviews
Positive69.2%
Neutral23.1%
Negative7.7%

In-app purchases

None

Bitmap Bay

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

The Completionist

One-time1
  • Monday Motivation$1.99

Questions

Is Bitmap Bay free?
Bitmap Bay costs $0.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is The Completionist free?
The Completionist costs $1.99, and also offers in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Bitmap Bay or The Completionist?
The Completionist is rated higher. Bitmap Bay averages 4.3 out of 5 from 8 ratings, while The Completionist averages 4.7 from 6 ratings.
Do Bitmap Bay or The Completionist have ads?
Neither Bitmap Bay nor The Completionist shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Bitmap Bay or The Completionist?
Bitmap Bay ships an update every 4 days, and The Completionist every 3 days. Most recently, Bitmap Bay was updated on November 5, 2026 and The Completionist on November 5, 2026.

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