Comparison

Author Career vs Pixel Rugby

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

Head to head
About

Author Career

Build a writing career from scratch, managing finances, energy, and skills. Write across multiple genres, publish books, and grow your audience week by week. Track your progress and career milestones.

Highlights
  • Week-by-week career progression
  • Write various book formats
  • Manage energy, money, and skills
  • Publish books and grow audience
  • Track royalties and reviews
  • Genre-specific fan bases
Features
Read full description

Start with a blank page, a little cash, and one week at a time. In Author Career, you build a writing life from the ground up. Choose what to write, manage your energy, improve your skills, publish your books, and watch your audience grow across genres. Every week brings a decision. Work a job to cover expenses, train your craft, draft a new manuscript, edit a book, submit to publishers, or launch your next release. Each choice shapes your money, fans, skills, reviews, and long-term career. Write across Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Horror, Historical Fiction, Young Adult, and Adventure. Pick formats, generate titles, set prices, compare publishing paths, and track the results as your catalog grows. Features: Build a week-by-week author career Write short stories, novellas, novels, and epics Manage energy, money, debt, expenses, and career tradeoffs Improve skills like creativity, grammar, plotting, character development, prose, and discipline Edit manuscripts, choose prices, and prepare book launches Grow general and genre-specific fan bases Track book history, royalties, reviews, milestones, and yearly progress Play a focused single-player writing career sim Build your catalog, find your audience, and see how far your author career can go.

About

Pixel Rugby

Experience retro arcade rugby with one-thumb controls. Guide your team through lanes, pass strategically, and dive for tries. Enjoy quick matches, tournaments, and a career mode with cross-device syncing.

Highlights
  • One-thumb gameplay
  • Multi-lane passing
  • Career mode with promotion/relegation
  • Multiple tournament types
  • Cross-device save syncing
  • Customizable squads
  • Pixel art and chiptune soundtrack
Features
Read full description

Retro arcade rugby you play with one thumb. Your five players run up the pitch across five lanes. Pass to the lane above or below to get round defenders, then dive over the line to score. You attack, the computer defends, and the other side's possessions are simulated, so a full match takes about five minutes. Easy to learn, with plenty to dig into: 100 nations, world rankings your results really move, a 20-club career and eleven tournaments. IPHONE, IPAD, APPLE TV AND MAC One purchase covers all four, with your save synced between them. On Apple TV you play with the Siri Remote, and on Mac with the keyboard or trackpad. Apple Watch gets its own Endless Runner, free for everyone, passing with the Digital Crown. FOUR WAYS TO PLAY Endless Runner: One sprint, three hearts, and a tougher nation every 100 metres until only the world number one is left. Distance is your score, with a top-200 board kept on your device. Quick Match: Two nations, one short match. Play it as a ranked Test that moves the world rankings, or as a friendly that changes nothing. Hold the button instead of tapping it for a surprise fixture, always away from home. Tournaments: Eleven competitions: the Global Cup, the North and South Nations, and eight more cups. Who qualifies comes from your own world rankings, so a nation you build up can reach a cup it couldn't before. The Global Cup takes the best of each region plus five wildcards, so every continent is always there. Career: Twenty clubs in two divisions, with promotion and relegation. It saves after every match, so a season works fine in short sittings. Before a season starts you can choose standard bonus points or the French system, where the attacking bonus needs three more tries than the other side instead of four in total. MATCH DAY ON TV Big matches open with TV pundits previewing the game and end with a TV interview with your captain. Other career matches get a video podcast: a preview before kickoff or a recap after. After the final whistle your supporters' group chat reacts, and a newspaper covers the round. You can turn each of these off in Settings > Atmosphere. ALSO IN THE GAME • Pixel art, an optional CRT filter and a chiptune soundtrack. • Weather that changes how a match plays. • Anthems and war dances before kickoff. • Your own squad: name your players, choose their looks and earn them stars in Training. • Haptics on iPhone, so you feel the tackles and the scrums. • Two kits for every nation and three for every club. • Crowds that grow or shrink with who is playing and where. Fully playable in English, French and Spanish. FREE AND PRO Free: the Endless Runner, Quick Match friendlies, the first three rounds of a career, and two complete tournaments. One purchase unlocks the rest for good: ranked Tests, every tournament, the full career and save sync across your devices. No subscription. It covers iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac. NO ACCOUNTS, NO ADS, NO TRACKING Nothing to sign up for, no ads and no data collected. Your save stays on your device, and syncs through your own iCloud only if you turn it on.

Screenshots

Author Career4 screens
Pixel Rugby4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Author Career at none against Pixel Rugby's 1. Author Career also leads on review sentiment (83% vs 60%). Pixel Rugby's advantage is ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 9 days). On price, rating, ratings volume and iOS requirement 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. Pixel Rugby sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Author Career asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.5 for Author Career against 4.4 for Pixel Rugby. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 6 and 7 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 83% of Author Career's written reviews are positive against 60% of Pixel Rugby's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Author Career ships an update every 9 days, Pixel Rugby every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Author Career versus Pixel Rugby: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterAuthor CareerPixel Rugby
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.5 (6 ratings) — better4.4 (7 ratings)
Positive reviews83.3% of reviews — better60.0% of reviews
Number of ratings67 — better
Update frequencyEvery 9 daysEvery 2 days — better
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationAd-supported — betterFreemium
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS15.115.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size41 MB32 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperMatthew GreenSwipeglass

Customer experience

Author Career

All ratings6 ratings
Positive83.3%
Neutral16.7%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews6 reviews
Positive83.3%
Neutral16.7%
Negative0.0%

Pixel Rugby

All ratings7 ratings
Positive85.7%
Neutral0.0%
Negative14.3%
Written reviews5 reviews
Positive60.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative40.0%

In-app purchases

None

Author Career

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

Pixel Rugby

One-time1
  • Pixel Rugby Pro$8.99

Questions

Is Author Career free?
Author Career is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Pixel Rugby free?
Pixel Rugby is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, Author Career or Pixel Rugby?
Author Career is rated higher. Author Career averages 4.5 out of 5 from 6 ratings, while Pixel Rugby averages 4.4 from 7 ratings.
Do Author Career or Pixel Rugby have ads?
Author Career shows ads; Pixel Rugby does not.
Which is updated more often, Author Career or Pixel Rugby?
Author Career ships an update every 9 days, and Pixel Rugby every 2 days. Most recently, Author Career was updated on October 13, 2026 and Pixel Rugby on November 1, 2026.

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