Comparison

Sumward vs Final Fortress

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

Head to head
About

Sumward

Features
Read full description

MAKE A HAND. BUILD AN ENGINE. BREAK THE MATH. Step into the Night Parade: a number-card roguelite where simple hands become outrageous scoring machines. Draw 8 cards, play up to 5, and turn familiar sets and runs - plus Sum to Ten, Spectrum, and Pure Run - into chips x mult. Then draft relics, tune your deck, and survive eight escalating rounds. EASY TO READ. DEEP TO MASTER. • See your score before you commit a hand • Keep the complete hand table one tap away • Read every suit by color, symbol, and name • Spot overlapping hands and score the strongest pattern BUILD SOMETHING BROKEN • Discover 22 relics across common, uncommon, and rare tiers • Combine relic effects into powerful scoring engines • Add, enhance, or remove cards in The Exchange • Upgrade cards with foil, holo, and gild enhancements • Bank coins between rounds to earn interest - or spend them chasing the perfect build THE RULES CHANGE AS YOU CLIMB Every run climbs through eight named rounds. From the third, each round bends a rule: fewer swaps, a smaller hand, halved coins, or junk hands worth nothing. Beat The Auditor at Round 8 to win. Your run saves after every action, so you can leave and continue exactly where you stopped. ONE SHARED DAILY Everyone gets the same seeded run each day: the same deal, the same rule changes, and the same Exchange. You get one ranked attempt, then you can compare your result on the global leaderboard. The Daily is free for everyone. THE MARATHON (PRO) Pro adds a separate board on the same daily deck. Carry it past Round 8 in Infinite Mode as often as you like: every run counts and your best run ranks. The Daily itself stays one ranked attempt for everyone. KEEP MAKING PROGRESS • Complete 13 milestones • Discover every hand and relic • Track personal records and your strongest builds • Change the full table with unlockable themes • Share polished result cards with friends FREE TO PLAY Play the ranked Daily every day, start five introductory casual runs, then receive three casual starts each day. Free players get the complete eight-round game and the full core relic pool. There are no ads. GO PRO Unlock unlimited casual runs, continue winning builds into Infinite Mode, expand from five to eight relic slots after Round 8, play today's deck on the Marathon Pro board, where unlimited attempts count and your best run past Round 8 ranks, keep the Ledger of lifetime records and your last 30 runs, and equip every premium table theme. Choose the one-time Full Game Unlock or the StackForge Play Pass. No subscription is required to own the full game. Made by StackForge Studios. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Final Fortress

Engage in a unique match-3 puzzle experience set within an old terminal interface. Complete daily tasks by matching tiles to gather supplies, repair your last fortress, and uncover a compelling story. Enjoy a quiet, atmospheric game with dynamic sound and AI-driven challenges.

Highlights
  • Match-3 puzzle gameplay
  • Fortress management and repair
  • Story-driven log entries
  • AI-driven challenge mode
  • Dynamic, synthesized soundtrack
  • View-only player station board
Features
Read full description

Final Fortress is a match-3 puzzle. The whole game is the screen of an old terminal: green text, one cursor, and you, the commandant of the last fortress. It is a quiet game. A working console in the dark, the hum of the systems, static like rain. A watch takes fifteen or twenty minutes: do the day's tasks, read what came in, hand over. Nothing hurries you, and nothing happens while you are away. Come back after a week and the fortress is exactly as you left it. Match tiles to finish the day's tasks. Each task brings supplies. Spend them to repair the fortress: reactor, hydroponics, antenna, armory, infirmary. Every repaired system opens new missions. Match 4 or more to charge special tiles. They clear a line, a block, or every tile of one kind. Swap two charged tiles together and they fire as one bigger shape, up to the whole board. The board gets busier as you go: convoy crates that pay out at the bottom, sealed containers with a special tile inside, interference to clear layer by layer, burned sectors the tiles fall past. Some tasks ask for a pattern: decode a sequence in order, or fill a gauge in every column. AI Madness is a mode of its own, outside the fortress. Each shift bends the rules: boards up to 10 by 13, sometimes only three kinds of tile, cascades that barely stop, tasks that may be impossible. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, Apple's on-device model (Foundation Models) picks the shift's character and writes its line in the log. Nothing leaves the phone. Otherwise the terminal does the same on its own. Nothing is at stake and nothing is banked. Every shift has a code. Send it to a friend and they get exactly the same board. There is a story in the log: three acts, four threads, and the notes of the commandants who held the fortress before you. It comes a few lines at a time. Read it or skip it. The game never nags about it. Repair the antenna and you will see a board with other players' stations. It is view-only, there is no chat, and it updates once a day. When the story is over, the log keeps going quietly on its own. The music belongs to your fortress alone. The sound is synthesized live and seeded from your fortress, so your station hums like no other and never loops. The hum changes with what is running, with the hour of the night and with the weather outside. Each kind of tile has its own note, and a cascade climbs the scale. One extra room, The Long Dark, carries a call of its own. Three more stations use the instruments in your phone: a weather post that reads the barometer, an acoustic modem and a direction finder. A home screen widget shows your fortress at a glance, in StandBy too. No ads. No lives, timers, energy or streaks. No pop-ups, no push notifications, no accounts, no daily rewards to come back for. Run out of moves and the terminal just says the packet was lost. Try again, nothing is taken away. You can drop a task at any time. Most purchases are cosmetic only: screen colors, ambience rooms, strike sounds, custom names. One purchase, Support the Watch, buys nothing at all: it is a thank-you and nothing more. Nothing you can buy helps you play, and no purchase moves you up the board. Works offline, on iPhone and iPad. Fully playable with VoiceOver, with a flicker-free stable phosphor mode and a calm mode that softens the board's flashes and haptics.

Screenshots

Sumward4 screens
Final Fortress4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Final Fortress at weekly against Sumward's every 3 weeks. Sumward's advantage is iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Sumward sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month and Final Fortress sells 4 one-off in-app purchases. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Sumward ships an update every 3 weeks, Final Fortress weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 7 level
Sumward versus Final Fortress: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSumwardFinal Fortress
PriceFreeFree
Rating—4.0 (1 ratings) — better
Number of ratings—1 — better
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
Monetization—Free with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.1 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size137 MB5 MB
Age rating4+12+
DeveloperStackForge StudiosDmitrii Dark

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Sumward

Subscriptions2
  • StackForge Play Pass Monthly$2.991 Month
  • StackForge Play Pass Annual$14.991 Year
One-time1
  • Sumward Full Game Unlock$4.99
4 purchases

Final Fortress

One-time4
  • Amber Phosphor$0.99
  • Emerald Phosphor$0.99
  • The Long Dark$0.99
Show 1 more
  • Memory Chip$2.99

Questions

Is Sumward free?
Sumward is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Final Fortress free?
Final Fortress is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Sumward or Final Fortress have ads?
Neither Sumward nor Final Fortress shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Sumward or Final Fortress?
Sumward ships an update every 3 weeks, and Final Fortress weekly. Most recently, Sumward was updated on October 29, 2026 and Final Fortress on October 25, 2026.

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