AsciiTapper vs Retro Buzz
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
AsciiTapper
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Serve up frosty mugs of root beer in a glowing green terminal. AsciiTapper is a love letter to 80s arcade serving games, rendered entirely in living phosphor text. Customers are walking up the bars and they're thirsty. Slide mugs down the bar to push them back, catch the empties before they crash, and read the room: rush the big spenders for early-serve bonuses, keep up with speedy customers, and never pour for the grumpy ones. Features: - An eight-stage career of 84 hand-authored shifts, each with its own twist and a Master contract - Clear, Clean, and Master ratings on every shift - Daily Challenge: one ranked attempt per day, the same seeded puzzle for everyone, unlimited practice afterward - Combo scoring that rewards sustained, error-free serve-and-catch play - Achievements tracked in-game, plus Game Center leaderboards - A pure retro terminal aesthetic: the whole game is ASCII art, with optional cosmetic CRT themes - Simple two-tap play: tap a lane to move, tap again to serve, and be there to catch - No ads. Ever. The tutorial, the first three career stages, and Daily Challenge are free. One optional Full Shift purchase unlocks stages 4 through 8 plus Endless mode. No subscriptions, and purchases never affect ranked play. The terminal is warmed up. The mugs are cold. Tap in. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Retro Buzz
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RETRO BUZZ โ A LOVE LETTER TO THE ARCADE. Dodge, shoot, deflect, chase and raid your way through a swarm of pixel-art insects across an endless ladder of escalating stages. Inspired by the arcade legends of the early '80s, Retro Buzz layers modern game-feel โ combo multipliers, powerup drops, a dodge-dash, screen shake, telegraphed enemy fire โ onto chunky multi-colour pixel art with a soft neon glow. SIX STAGE TYPES โ AND YOU EARN THE DETOURS Formation stages are the backbone. Everything else happens because of what you did in them. โข FORMATION STAGES โ The classic. Bees, butterflies and Queen Bees fly in choreographed lines, settle into formation, then dive at you in pairs and groups. Watch the marked RUNNERS: they bolt for the planet once the swarm thins. Kill them all for a bonus... โข PURSUIT โ ...or let one escape and next stage you chase it down. Free 2D flight over a scrolling planet surface, ground turrets, waves that push harder the harder you fire, and a fortress with three cores to crack at the end. The escapees turn up as 5ร bounties. โข BASE ASSAULT โ If a Queen carries your captured fighter off, or you shoot down the spy ship and grab its beacon, the next stage is a free-roaming raid across a looping star map. Your ship flies forward, you steer, and fire goes fore and aft. Hunt the hex stations on the radar, punch the core through its hatch (or strip all six cannon pods), dodge mines, and watch the alert climb from GREEN to RED. Find the station holding your fighter and it rejoins you as a wingman. โข CHALLENGE STAGES โ Bonus rounds where twin lines trace S-curves, loops, figure-8s and spirals across the screen. No damage. Pure accuracy. โข BONUS ROUND โ Score a PERFECT on a challenge stage and your ship becomes a paddle. The swarm fires, you bounce it back, and the ricochets one-shot anything they touch. โข BOSS BATTLES โ Every fifth stage the Queen Hornet drifts overhead: three HP-keyed phases, aimed shots, three-way spreads and U-shaped dive attacks. You get a 3-hit buffer per life. Every fourth stage cleared grants an extra life, and a rare 1UP drop floats down from killed enemies. Deep runs feel earned. POWERUPS R โ Rapid Fire. Faster fire, bigger bullet cap. S โ Spread Shot. Three-way fan. O โ Shield Orb. Absorbs the next hit. B โ Smart Bomb. Wipes every diving enemy on screen. ! โ Beacon. Dropped by the spy ship. Reveals the enemy bases. 1 โ Extra Life. Very rare. Treasure it. POLISHED FEEL โข Hit feedback on every impact: sprite flash, sparks, debris, screen shake. โข Combo multiplier โ chain kills without a miss for up to 5ร score. โข Enemy fire is telegraphed at the muzzle, so you always get a fair read. โข Enemies bank into their turns and face where they fly. โข Hand-drawn multi-colour sprites: striped bees, red-winged butterflies with eyespots, crowned Queen Bees and a 48ร48 Queen Hornet. โข Optional CRT scanlines. Persistent high score and best stage. โข Leave the title screen alone and the game plays itself โ a different stage type every time. CONTROLS An analog stick, DASH and FIRE live in their own band under the playfield, so your thumbs never cover the action. Hold FIRE to shoot, tap DASH to dodge through bullets. The stick moves you sideways in the classic stages, flies in 2D on the planet run, and steers on the base raid. NO ADS. NO IAP. NO ACCOUNTS. JUST THE GAME. Best paired with: a quiet evening, a dim room, and the satisfying feeling of finally finding the base that took your fighter.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Retro Buzz at none against AsciiTapper's 4. AsciiTapper's advantage is iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. AsciiTapper sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Retro Buzz asks for nothing beyond the download.
AsciiTapper ships an update monthly, Retro Buzz every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 5, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | AsciiTapper | Retro Buzz |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Monthly โ better | Every 6 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No โ better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 โ better | 17.0 |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 2 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Vertolini | Alexander Garmash |
In-app purchases
AsciiTapper
- Faster Mugs$0.99
- Mug Catcher$1.99
- CRT Theme Pack$1.99
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- Full Shift$3.99
Retro Buzz
No in-app purchases









