Comparison

Cosmic Forge vs Novarchy

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

Head to head
About

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.

About

Novarchy

Features
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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 โ€ข Found and grow colonies, placing buildings freely โ€ข Research a deep tech tree โ€ข Build fleets, raid rivals, defend with bastions and shields โ€ข Trade on a player market, sign contracts, collect bounties โ€ข Join a guild, coordinate objectives, climb the leaderboard โ€ข 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

Cosmic Forge4 screens
Novarchy4 screens

Verdict

The call

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

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

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.

Scorecard3 real differences ยท 3 level
Cosmic Forge versus Novarchy: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCosmic ForgeNovarchy
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 5 weeksEvery 3 days โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, iPad, iPod โ€” better
Requires iOS17.015.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size6 MB174 MB
Age rating4+9+
DeveloperQUALITY CAT SP Z O Oalessio rocchi

In-app purchases

None

Cosmic Forge

No in-app purchases

None

Novarchy

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Cosmic Forge free?
Cosmic Forge is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Novarchy free?
Novarchy is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Cosmic Forge or Novarchy have ads?
Neither Cosmic Forge nor Novarchy shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Cosmic Forge or Novarchy?
Cosmic Forge ships an update every 5 weeks, and Novarchy every 3 days. Most recently, Cosmic Forge was updated on October 6, 2026 and Novarchy on October 10, 2026.

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