Cosmic Forge vs Novarchy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
Cosmic Forge
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Cosmic Forge is a deep offline idle game about turning a single iron vein into an interstellar mining empire. START SIMPLE Tap rocks. Upgrade your shaft. Automate with a baseline foreman. Watch a transporter shuttle ore from the mine to the refinery, then to the warehouse, where it sells for Coins. Every component โ shaft, transporter, refinery, warehouse โ has its own milestone multipliers every 10 levels, so progression keeps unlocking speed and capacity spikes. UNLOCK THE COSMOS Beyond Alpha Asteroid there are comet clusters, planets, moons, anomalies, and singularity zones. Each location type has its own production multipliers and warehouse sell rates โ anomaly-grade minerals pay poorly per second but richly per sale. HIRE MANAGERS Common managers enable auto-mining; bonus managers stack passive multipliers and trigger powerful active abilities (instant trips, production boosts, free upgrades). Assign them per mine. Some managers survive prestige. RESEARCH TREE 50+ research nodes across multiple branches โ economy, production, transport, offline efficiency, stock capacity, coin multipliers, prestige. Queue active research in parallel slots (expand via Galactic Research). Every tier you complete compounds. PRESTIGE FOREVER Perform a Stellar Reset when the cosmos is ready. Earn Stardust based on your total iron-equivalent across every resource. Spend Stardust on permanent upgrades that carry across runs. Eventually unlock Galactic Ascension โ a meta-prestige layer with its own research tree and Dark Matter currency. DAILY CHALLENGES Three challenges per day with streak rewards at 7 and 14 days. Missed days reset the streak but the game doesn't punish absence. OFFLINE EARNINGS Step away for up to a week โ Cosmic Forge continues mining at a tapered efficiency schedule and rolls a summary up on your return. Research that was in flight completes while you sleep. COMPLETELY OFFLINE No account required. No internet required. No ads. No in-app purchases. No subscriptions. No tracking. No analytics. No SDKs phoning home. GOD MODE (OPTIONAL) Want to test builds, skip a grind, or just play sandbox? God Mode is free for everyone โ a one-tap toggle in Settings (behind a "this may corrupt your save" warning, because it really can). First public release โ 0.19.0. Thanks for playing through 100+ pre-release builds with us.
Novarchy
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Novarchy is a persistent multiplayer space strategy game (4X) you can actually play with a job. One shared galaxy, always on. Build your colony, research technology, arm fleets, trade, raid, join a guild. Ten minutes two or three times a day is a real way to play: timers run in minutes and hours, not days. THE GALAXY IS NEVER EMPTY Around 80 of the rival empires are run by AI agents, each with its own personality and its own sleep schedule in its own time zone. They build, research, negotiate in the in game chat, hold grudges and act on them. If someone threatens you and then attacks, it is the same agent following through. They are only allowed to talk about things that really happened in the game. WHAT YOU DO โข Found and grow colonies, placing buildings freely โข Research a deep tech tree โข Build fleets, raid rivals, defend with bastions and shields โข Trade on a player market, sign contracts, collect bounties โข Join a guild, coordinate objectives, climb the leaderboard โข Get a push notification when your colony is under attack HONEST NOTES The art is AI generated (solo developer, no budget). The rival empires are LLM driven, and that is disclosed openly: the design bet is that you cannot tell them from human players. The game is a free hobby project: no ads, nothing to buy, and no plans to monetise it. It runs on hardware the developer pays for, so if the galaxy fills up, signups close rather than a shop opening. NO ACCOUNT NEEDED Pick a commander name and you are in. Sign in with Apple or Google only if you want to keep your empire across devices. You can delete your account at any time from Settings. Your empire lives on the server: play from your phone, pick up in any browser at novarchy.com. There is a small Discord community and the developer reads everything.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Novarchy at every 3 days against Cosmic Forge's every 5 weeks. Novarchy also leads on device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Cosmic Forge ships an update every 5 weeks, Novarchy every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 6, 2026 and October 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Cosmic Forge | Novarchy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Every 3 days โ better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod โ better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 โ better |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 6 MB | 174 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 9+ |
| Developer | QUALITY CAT SP Z O O | alessio rocchi |
In-app purchases
Cosmic Forge
No in-app purchases
Novarchy
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Cosmic Forge free?
Is Novarchy free?
Do Cosmic Forge or Novarchy have ads?
Which is updated more often, Cosmic Forge or Novarchy?
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