Comparison

HatchPals vs Nova

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

Head to head
About

HatchPals

Care for adorable creatures that hatch from eggs, helping them grow and evolve. Customize their habitats and engage in both active and idle gameplay to earn rewards and improve your trainer rank.

Highlights
  • Hatch and care for creatures
  • Creature growth and evolution
  • Habitat design and decoration
  • Idle progression gameplay
  • Earn Trainer Points
  • Improve trainer rank
Features
Read full description

Step into a charming world where eggs hatch into lovable creatures that need your care to grow, evolve, and thrive. HatchPals blends virtual pet simulation, idle progression, and habitat customization into a relaxing and rewarding experience. - Hatch mysterious eggs and care for your HatchPals as they grow through different life stages. - Feed, clean, rest, and play with your HatchPals to earn Trainer Points. - Design and decorate habitats that match your HatchPals’ traits. - Your HatchPals continue to grow over time, making HatchPals perfect for both active play and relaxed, idle sessions. - Earn points, improve your rank, and prove yourself as the ultimate HatchPals trainer.

About

Nova

Command a star fleet in a real-time galactic conquest game. Engage in strategic battles, forge binding diplomatic contracts, and manage your empire efficiently. Play at your own pace, from quick sprints to long campaigns, with background notifications keeping you informed.

Highlights
  • Real-time galactic conquest
  • Binding diplomatic contracts
  • Fog of war for strategic depth
  • Customizable game pace and duration
  • Background notifications
  • Map editor for custom galaxies
Features
Read full description

You command one star at the edge of a contested galaxy, with a few hundred ships in the garrison and a clock counting down. Everything else is neutral, or held by a rival who wants it as badly as you do. Hold the most living stars when the mission timer ends and you win. Knock every rival out first, and you win early. Nova is a real-time space-strategy game of galactic conquest for two or more players. Every commander starts with exactly the same star, ships, and credits, so games are won by decisions, not dice. A war of decisions. You move under fog of war, seeing only what your own stars and scouts can reach, so a spy probe before an assault is often worth more than the ships it costs. The defender always holds the home-field edge, which means you have to outnumber a garrison by better than three to two just to fight to even odds. Capture stars, build factories, and your fleets and treasury compound together; spend on speed, range, or battle power and the advantage carries across your whole empire. Drop a nova bomb and a star is gone for good, which denies it to a rival but scores it for no one. Diplomacy you can hold someone to. Talk in-game on a global channel or in a private thread with a single commander. Then make it binding: a contract offers another player cash outright, or only if they send the fleet you ask for, to the star you name. The moment they accept, the cash moves and the fleet launches on their behalf, and it cannot be recalled. Alliances are only as good as the deals behind them, and here the deals actually stick. Set the pace yourself. A game's host decides how long it runs and how fast its clock turns. Spin up a one-hour sprint where production ticks every few seconds and the whole war is settled over a lunch break. Or stretch the same game over days or even weeks, a long campaign you think about between meetings and come back to when something shifts. Any player can propose a pause for sleep or work, and once a second player agrees, the whole game freezes, deadlines and all, until it resumes. Let it run in the background. You never have to keep the app open or refresh anything. Nova notifies your device when it actually matters: a star of yours under attack, a shield that just blocked a spy probe, a fleet that reached its target, a message from a rival, a pause proposal, the game kicking off. Leave a slow game running for days and you will not lose the thread. Less micromanagement, more strategy. Fleets route themselves through your territory, so you can strike far beyond a single jump without plotting every hop. Standing orders turn a safe rear star into a supply pump: keep a garrison, forward the surplus, and reinforcements march to the front on their own while you think about the next move. Build your own galaxies in the map editor and play them with friends, or drop into a balanced Risk-style world for two to six commanders. Play from your iPhone, iPad or a browser against the same opponents; a game runs identically whether you join from iOS or the web.

Screenshots

HatchPals4 screens
Nova4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Nova at none against HatchPals's 6. Nova also leads on update cadence (weekly vs every 5 weeks). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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. HatchPals sells 6 one-off in-app purchases. Nova asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for HatchPals against 5.0 for Nova. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 4 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

HatchPals ships an update every 5 weeks, Nova weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 7, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
HatchPals versus Nova: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHatchPalsNova
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings)5.0 (4 ratings)
Positive reviews—100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings24 — better
Update frequencyEvery 5 weeksWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better16.4
Further details — not scored
Size222 MB51 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperRevolving GamesKevin Gilpin

Customer experience

HatchPals

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Nova

All ratings4 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

6 purchases

HatchPals

One-time6
  • 200 Gold$1.99
  • 550 Gold$4.99
  • 1200 Gold$9.99
Show 3 more
  • 2600 Gold$19.99
  • 7000 Gold$49.99
  • 15000 Gold$99.99
None

Nova

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is HatchPals free?
HatchPals is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Nova free?
Nova is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, HatchPals or Nova?
HatchPals and Nova are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 2 and 4 ratings respectively.
Do HatchPals or Nova have ads?
Neither HatchPals nor Nova shows ads.
Which is updated more often, HatchPals or Nova?
HatchPals ships an update every 5 weeks, and Nova weekly. Most recently, HatchPals was updated on October 7, 2026 and Nova on October 12, 2026.

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