Hexarch vs Celestile
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hexarch
A complete 4X strategy game playable offline on iPhone and iPad. Build your civilization, explore a hidden world, and choose from four distinct victory conditions. Engage in diplomacy, warfare, and economic management against AI rivals.
- Offline 4X strategy gameplay
- Four distinct victory conditions
- AI rivals with unique personalities
- Real-time global market simulation
- Diplomacy and siege warfare
- Pass-and-play and asynchronous multiplayer
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Hexarch is a complete 4X strategy game for iPhone and iPad, built one hex at a time. Free, with no ads, no in-app purchases, no account and no tracking. It plays fully offline. Your civilization starts with a single city in a world hidden beneath the clouds. Send out warriors and workers, uncover forests, mountains and coastlines, and turn them into farms, mines, lumber camps and harbors. Then decide how you want to win. FOUR WAYS TO WIN • Domination — be the last civilization standing • Tech — research 20 of 25 technologies • Economy — amass 2,000 gold and raise three Wonders • Score — lead the world when the turn limit arrives A REAL ECONOMY • Every city feeds its people — grain surpluses grow your cities • Workers build farms, mines, camps, markets, banks and universities • A living global market: sell a flood of iron and watch the price crash • Automatic trade routes between your cities earn steady gold • Wonders, districts and faction buildings reward careful planning RIVALS WITH PERSONALITY • Six civilizations, each with its own bonuses, unique units and buildings • AI rivals who expand, trade, research, declare war and sue for peace • Four difficulty levels, from relaxed to Brutal • Unlock bonus civilizations and the Machina boss by winning A WORLD FULL OF CHOICES • Diplomacy: peace treaties, trade pacts, gifts and grudges that fade over time • Siege warfare: break a city's walls before you can take it • Optional barbarians, city-states you can befriend or vassalize, and story events • Ancient ruins, bonus resources and a tech tree with branching strategies PLAY YOUR WAY • Single player against up to five AI rivals • Pass-and-play multiplayer on one device • Share a match file with a friend and take turns asynchronously • Autosave after every turn — continue exactly where you left off • Records track your victories, best scores and fastest wins Hexarch is a complete game: no ads, no in-app purchases, no accounts and no tracking. Your saves never leave your device.
Celestile
Engage in turn-based space conquest with deterministic combat. Expand your empire, research technologies, and outmaneuver rivals to achieve victory through domination or ascendancy. Features unique factions, strategic combat, and a deep tech web.
- Deterministic combat with no luck
- Expand, build, research, and out-think rivals
- Two win conditions: Domination and Ascendancy
- Eight unique factions with strengths and weaknesses
- Strategic tech web across five disciplines
- Fog of war that hides fleets, not geography
- Portrait mode for one-handed play
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A turn-based 4X strategy game with no dice. Every attack shows its exact result before you commit, and that number is what happens. No luck. Just the plan you made. Claim a cluster of space one tile at a time — expand, build, research, and out-think up to fourteen rival empires. TWO WAYS TO WIN Domination — hold every planet on the map. Ascendancy — finish ahead of every rival inside 40 rounds. DETERMINISTIC COMBAT The forecast above your units is the outcome. Attack, defence, terrain and tech resolve to one number, and you see it before you commit. A fight you lose is a fight you misread, not one the dice took from you. EIGHT FACTIONS, EACH WITH A COST Every faction has one real strength and one real weakness. Hive Mind builds mines for 1 energy and pulls 50% more out of them. Swarm fields cheaper units and one extra per planet, but defends 10% weaker. Nothing here is a straight upgrade, so choosing is an actual decision. TERRITORY YOU HAVE TO EARN Every planet projects a zone of control, and you can only build inside your own. Put three Moon Lasers in a planet's zone and that zone widens. Growth is a build order, not a land grab. A TECH WEB THAT FITS ON ONE SCREEN Five disciplines — Warfare, Doctrine, Aeronautics, Stellar and Lunar — three tiers each. Fifteen technologies on a radial web you read at a glance instead of scrolling. FOG THAT HIDES FLEETS, NOT GEOGRAPHY You see your own zones plus a tile, and a tile around every unit. Ground you have already explored stays on the map, dimmed. An enemy fleet standing on it does not. AN ECONOMY YOU CAN LEVERAGE Deposit energy in the bank and draw interest. Or borrow against the future and settle a balloon payment five rounds later. Miss it and the Galactic Bank sends dreadnoughts to collect. EIGHT UNIT CLASSES Scout, Marine, Rover, Fighter, Bomber, Mech, Artillery, Dreadnought. Build a military university for a class and every unit of that class attacks 10% harder for the rest of the game, anywhere on the map. BUILT FOR A PHONE, NOT PORTED TO ONE Portrait, one-handed, low-poly worlds on deep space navy. The board scales with the field — a tight 12x12 grid against a single opponent, up to 24x24 against fourteen. Four difficulty levels. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No account. No login. No internet connection. No chat. There is one interstitial ad, and only from your third match of the day. Buy any faction and it never appears again. Players in the EEA, UK and Switzerland never see it at all. WHAT IS FREE Two factions — Hive Mind and Swarm — and the whole game around them: every map size, every unit, every technology, both win conditions, all 63 achievements. Six further factions are a one-time purchase each. No subscription. 63 achievements, a five-star rating for every faction, and a career record that persists between games. Nine languages: English, Spanish, Russian, German, French, Portuguese, Hindi, Korean, Japanese. Frosty Robot Studio.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Hexarch at none against Celestile's 6. Hexarch also leads on ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (daily vs every 11 days). Celestile's advantage is ratings volume (5 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, review sentiment and device support 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
Both are free to download. Celestile sells 6 one-off in-app purchases. Hexarch asks for nothing beyond the download.
Hexarch holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.8. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Celestile has 5 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
Hexarch ships an update daily, Celestile every 11 days. The most recent releases landed on November 2, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Hexarch | Celestile |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 4.8 (5 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 5 — better |
| Update frequency | Daily — better | Every 11 days |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 17 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Yves Flueckiger | Frosty Robot Studio, LLC |
Customer experience
Hexarch
Celestile
In-app purchases
Hexarch
No in-app purchases
Celestile
- Collective Faction$1.99
- Nomad$1.99
- Wardens$1.99
Show 3 moreShow fewer
- Ascendant$1.99
- Warbound$1.99
- Forge$1.99









