Comparison

Startup Dev Story vs CRUNCH

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

Head to head
About

Startup Dev Story

Features
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Found your own software startup and grow it from a one-person garage hustle into a world-changing tech giant, one pixel at a time. Startup Dev Story is a cozy, fast-paced business simulation inspired by the management-sim classics. Hire developers, designers, and marketers, organize them into teams, and cook up products in the Lab by mixing a type, an audience, and secret ingredients. Discover powerful combos, ship them, and watch the subscribers (and the cash) roll in. But the tech world never sits still. Survive and thrive across shifting eras, the SaaS & Mobile Boom, Crypto Winter, the AI Revolution and beyond, each one reshaping what sells and who your rivals are. FEATURES • Hire & grow a team, level up staff, manage energy, loyalty and burnout, and promote your stars. • The Product Lab, combine type + audience + ingredients to discover hidden synergy recipes. • Ride the eras, adapt as the market transforms decade after decade. • Rivals & market, competitors ship their own products; trends rise and fall. • Research & perks, unlock new product types and kit out your office. • Three difficulties, from a gentle Learn-the-Ropes run to a brutal lean-runway challenge. • New Game+, bank a veteran co-founder and a cash head start for your next venture. • Multiple save slots, run parallel companies. • Handcrafted pixel art and a chiptune soundtrack, all generated with love. Free to play, supported by ads. No account required, your progress is saved on your device. Can you survive the burn, out-ship your rivals, and IPO your way to the singularity? Your startup story starts now.

About

CRUNCH

Features
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Build the empire. Keep the receipts. CRUNCH is a dark, cutthroat studio-management tycoon. You start alone in a 1982 garage with a little cash and a lot of nerve — and claw your way to a game-industry empire across fifty brutal years. Make games. Make money. Make enemies. DESIGN GAMES THAT MATTER (OR SELL) Pick a topic, a genre, and a platform, then steer three stages of development across nine craft fields. Balance design against technology, match your focus to what the genre demands, squash the bugs you can afford to, and ship it — then watch four critics decide your fate in real time. BUILD A TEAM. THEN MIND IT. Hire programmers, artists, designers, and writers, each with their own talent, traits, and breaking point. Crunch buys speed and costs souls. Push too hard and your best people burn out and walk — straight into a rival's open door. SURVIVE THE INDUSTRY Predatory publishers. A venture capitalist whose money is a leash. Lawsuits, leaks, scandals, console wars, and a charismatic rival who considers your existence a rounding error. Eighty-plus events force real trade-offs: money or morale, reputation or quality, your integrity or your survival. GROW AN EMPIRE Research new genres and engine features. Move out of the garage, into a studio floor, a tower, a campus. Build your own console. Launch a live-service operation the players never leave. Forty fictional platforms rise and fall across six eras of an industry that eats its own. EVERY CHOICE IS A TRADE An authored story with a cast you'll grow attached to — and multiple endings. The empire. The acquisition. The cult legend. The reckoning. The landfill. How you get there is up to you, and it costs something either way. - 14 genres, 44 topics, 40 platforms across 6 eras - A deep research tree, your own console, and live-service late game - 80+ branching events and a multi-act story with several endings - Sign in with Apple to sync your studio across devices via iCloud — or play as a guest - Designed for iPhone and iPad, with a clean, dark, native interface - No ads. No tracking. No third-party servers. Built in a garage. Like everything else worth keeping.

Screenshots

Startup Dev Story4 screens
CRUNCH4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: CRUNCH at none against Startup Dev Story's shown. Startup Dev Story's advantage is iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). On price, in-app purchases and device support 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard2 real differences Ā· 4 level
Startup Dev Story versus CRUNCH: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterStartup Dev StoryCRUNCH
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 4 months—
AdsYesNo — better
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size72 MB7 MB
Age rating4+9+
DeveloperJAIME RICHARD DAZA GUZMANFranky Fernandez

In-app purchases

None

Startup Dev Story

No in-app purchases

None

CRUNCH

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Startup Dev Story free?
Startup Dev Story is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is CRUNCH free?
CRUNCH is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Startup Dev Story or CRUNCH have ads?
Startup Dev Story shows ads; CRUNCH does not.

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