Comparison

Pocket Coil Arcade vs Retro Buzz

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

Head to head
About

Pocket Coil Arcade

Features
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Pocket Coil is a throwback to the kind of games we used to lose hours to — simple, fast, and built purely for fun. No ads. No paywalls. No tricks. Just tight controls, clean retro visuals, and gameplay that rewards skill and focus. Spin, dodge, and survive as the coil tightens and the pace ramps up. Every run is quick to start, hard to master, and perfect for chasing “just one more try.” Designed to feel like a lost classic, Pocket Coil blends old-school arcade energy with modern polish. Features: • Free to play, forever • Completely ad-free • Fast, skill-based arcade gameplay • Clean, nostalgic visuals • Game Center leaderboards and achievements • Quick sessions with endless replayability Pocket Coil is about getting back to what made games great in the first place — simple rules, sharp reflexes, and the joy of beating your own score. No distractions. Just the game.

About

Retro Buzz

Features
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RETRO BUZZ — 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 — combo multipliers, powerup drops, a dodge-dash, screen shake, telegraphed enemy fire — onto chunky multi-colour pixel art with a soft neon glow. SIX STAGE TYPES — AND YOU EARN THE DETOURS Formation stages are the backbone. Everything else happens because of what you did in them. • FORMATION STAGES — 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... • PURSUIT — ...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 5× bounties. • BASE ASSAULT — 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. • CHALLENGE STAGES — Bonus rounds where twin lines trace S-curves, loops, figure-8s and spirals across the screen. No damage. Pure accuracy. • BONUS ROUND — 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. • BOSS BATTLES — 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 — Rapid Fire. Faster fire, bigger bullet cap. S — Spread Shot. Three-way fan. O — Shield Orb. Absorbs the next hit. B — Smart Bomb. Wipes every diving enemy on screen. ! — Beacon. Dropped by the spy ship. Reveals the enemy bases. 1 — Extra Life. Very rare. Treasure it. POLISHED FEEL • Hit feedback on every impact: sprite flash, sparks, debris, screen shake. • Combo multiplier — chain kills without a miss for up to 5× score. • Enemy fire is telegraphed at the muzzle, so you always get a fair read. • Enemies bank into their turns and face where they fly. • Hand-drawn multi-colour sprites: striped bees, red-winged butterflies with eyespots, crowned Queen Bees and a 48×48 Queen Hornet. • Optional CRT scanlines. Persistent high score and best stage. • Leave the title screen alone and the game plays itself — 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

Pocket Coil Arcade4 screens
Retro Buzz4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is device support: Retro Buzz at 3 against Pocket Coil Arcade's 1. Retro Buzz also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price, 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

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard2 real differences · 4 level
Pocket Coil Arcade versus Retro Buzz: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPocket Coil ArcadeRetro Buzz
PriceFreeFree
Update frequency—Every 6 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size44 MB3 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSteven WanglerAlexander Garmash

In-app purchases

None

Pocket Coil Arcade

No in-app purchases

None

Retro Buzz

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Pocket Coil Arcade free?
Pocket Coil Arcade is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Retro Buzz free?
Retro Buzz is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Pocket Coil Arcade or Retro Buzz have ads?
Neither Pocket Coil Arcade nor Retro Buzz shows ads.

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