Comparison

Glowfall vs Gem Falls

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

Head to head
About

Glowfall

Features
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Glowfall is a magical lantern-chaining puzzle game about restoring shrines, calming overloaded skies, and mastering beautiful combo runs. Draw paths through matching lanterns, release at the perfect moment, and use special lanterns to turn a crowded sky into a glowing cascade. Every run asks you to read the board, chase the objective, and keep the sky under control before pressure builds too high. FEATURES • Chain lanterns with smooth path-drawing gameplay • Play score, clear, color, and pressure-based objectives • Use prism, calm, and echo lanterns for tactical clears • Discover shrine spirits and bonus moments during runs • Restore the Founder Shrine and bring its light into gameplay • Master harder levels with sky pressure and overload states • Chase clean clears, long chains, and high-score runs • Play at your pace with readable, cozy arcade puzzle action Glowfall is designed for quick sessions that still feel rich: a few moves can become a perfect chain, a risky board can become a recovery, and a dark shrine can slowly come back to life. The sky is filling. Draw the chain. Restore the glow.

About

Gem Falls

Features
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Match three or more, watch the cascade take the rest, and keep going. Gemfall is an endless match-3 built for picking up and putting down. Every level asks for something different. Clear a colour, break through the ice, bring the cargo home. And when you close the app mid-run, the board, the score and your powerups are waiting exactly as you left them. No timer running against your day, no lives to wait for, no move you have to make right now. FOURTEEN WORLDS Every level is set somewhere, and where never changes: level two is a Maya temple in the jungle, level four is a dead valley under an erupting volcano, and they will be next time too. A wreck on the sea floor. A sweet factory. A frozen kingdom, a haunted mansion, a marble gate in the clouds, a garden at sunset, a gorge full of waterfalls, a toy box at the end of the afternoon, a fjord under the northern lights. Each world has its own six pieces, its own board, and its own weather in the air above it. CLASSIC Endless levels, each with its own objective. Chain your matches to build heat, and every gem on the board is worth more while it lasts. Clear the level, fall through the warp, and the next one asks a little more of you. TIME ATTACK Sixty seconds. Every match buys you a few more. See how far you can stretch the clock. POWER GEMS Four in a row makes a gem that clears a whole line. An L or a T makes one that blows a hole in the board. Five in a row makes the star. The rarest piece in the game and worth waiting for. Put two power gems together and the board comes apart. ICE, STONE AND CARGO Later levels do not just hand you the board. Ice freezes gems in place until you break the shell. Stone blocks take repeated knocks. Cargo has to be walked all the way to the bottom before it counts. FAIR BY DESIGN Ā· Free. No in-app purchases, no subscriptions, no ads. Nothing is locked behind a paywall, because there is no paywall. Ā· Fully playable offline. Ā· Nothing is collected. No analytics, no tracking, no account, no sign-up. Your run lives on your phone and nowhere else. Ā· The six gems differ in shape as well as in colour, so they stay apart if you do not see colour the way most people do. GAME CENTER Sign in to Game Center and your best Classic and Time Attack scores go on Apple's global leaderboards. Skip it and the game plays exactly the same, minus a rank. Gemfall is built from scratch in Swift for iPhone, rebuilt from the browser game of the same name. iPhone, portrait, iOS 18 or later.

Screenshots

Glowfall4 screens
Gem Falls4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Gem Falls at none against Glowfall's 2. Gem Falls also leads on ads (none vs shown) and update cadence (weekly vs every 4 months). On price, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price Ā· Rating Ā· Positive reviews Ā· Number of ratings Ā· Update frequency Ā· Ads Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Monetization Ā· Best chart rank Ā· Devices Ā· Requires iOS

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

Both are free to download. Glowfall sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Gem Falls asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Glowfall ships an update every 4 months, Gem Falls weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 9, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences Ā· 3 level
Glowfall versus Gem Falls: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterGlowfallGem Falls
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsWeekly — better
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
DevicesiPhone, iPad — betteriPhone
Requires iOS18.618.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size48 MB51 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperTendon LifeSandrino Kelders

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Glowfall

One-time2
  • Remove Ads$2.99
  • Founder Shrine Pack$3.99
None

Gem Falls

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Glowfall free?
Glowfall is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Gem Falls free?
Gem Falls is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Glowfall or Gem Falls have ads?
Glowfall shows ads; Gem Falls does not.
Which is updated more often, Glowfall or Gem Falls?
Glowfall ships an update every 4 months, and Gem Falls weekly. Most recently, Glowfall was updated on October 9, 2026 and Gem Falls on October 8, 2026.

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