Radioactive vs Backburn
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Radioactive
Experience a realistic nuclear war simulation where you launch and observe the unfolding consequences of strikes on a global satellite map. Witness the impact of real weapons, realistic flight times, and dynamic casualty counts over simulated days, influenced by weather-driven fallout.
- Realistic nuclear warfare simulation
- Real-world weapons with accurate yields
- Simulated flight times and delivery methods
- Dynamic casualty unfolding over days
- Weather-driven fallout simulation
- Detailed aftermath inspection
- Offline operation
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Radioactive is an immersive nuclear-warfare sandbox — not another static blast-radius calculator. Every strike is a living event you launch, fly, and watch play out on a real satellite map of Earth. REAL WEAPONS, REAL DELIVERY Choose from a catalog of real-world weapons with their accurate yields — from Little Boy to the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba — and deliver them the way they were actually fielded: silo-launched ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, ship-launched cruise missiles, or gravity bombs dropped from era-correct strategic bombers that fly the full sortie: ingress, release, loop-around, and return to base. REALISTIC FLIGHT, YOUR CLOCK Flights take realistic travel times — an intercontinental shot really takes half an hour. A universal simulation clock (Day 1, 11:36 AM…) runs the whole world, and you control it: watch in real time or fast-forward at up to 100×. Queue up an entire salvo and release it one strike at a time, or all at once. CASUALTIES THAT UNFOLD, NOT A PRELOADED NUMBER Built on a full offline population grid of the entire planet (8+ billion people), casualty tolls play out over simulated days, not as an instant statistic: the immediate blast, delayed trauma, firestorms, and radiation each take their toll on their own realistic timelines. The injured can succumb. The dead stay dead — strike the same city twice and the second blast finds only survivors. WEATHER-DRIVEN FALLOUT Groundbursts loft fallout that rides the wind — and the wind changes day to day. A plume that drifts north today can fan east tomorrow, painting realistic multi-day contamination footprints across the land. Airbursts maximize blast but leave little fallout, just like the real physics. Contaminated ground stays contaminated. INSPECT THE AFTERMATH Tap any city for a live census: pre-war population, killed, injured, the share of land rendered uninhabitable, and who's still alive. Track national tolls as percentages of each country's real population. Drill into every detonation for its full breakdown — death waves, injury types, and ongoing effects like firestorms and radiation exposure. BUILT NATIVE Pure SwiftUI and MapKit on a real 3D satellite globe. No accounts, no ads, no data collection — everything runs on your device, and your session persists exactly where you left it. All effects are approximations derived from public, declassified scaling-law physics (Glasstone & Dolan, 1977) and public population data. Radioactive is a simulation for entertainment and education — not a targeting or civil-defense tool.
Backburn
This offline strategy game lets you plan up to six turns ahead in wildfire scenarios. Compare different decisions, manage resources, and learn from your choices in a fictional environment. Rehearse before advancing to make every turn count.
- Plan six turns ahead
- Compare strategy branches
- Manage resources and crews
- Offline gameplay
- Thirty authored incidents
- After-action reports
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NEW IN 5.0: SEE THE NEXT TURN, UNDO A MISTAKE, TAKE A DAILY INCIDENT • Forecast: the map outlines every cell the fire will reach on your next Advance, and rings any structure that turn would lose. Change an order and the forecast redraws. It is exact for one turn because the game is deterministic. • Undo: step back any order placed since the last Advance, from a single line cell to a burnout. Undo never rerolls the fire. • Daily Incident: one new incident per date, generated on your device. An authored map with the wind turned 30 to 60 degrees and a fresh random sequence, the same for everyone that day. Your first finished attempt counts; practise as often as you like. Build a streak and share a plain-text result card. • Recruit, Standard or Veteran: Recruit slows the fire for learning, Standard is the campaign as you know it, Veteran spreads faster, spots more and makes engines work within two cells of their water target. • Service Record: nineteen commendations, from regime specialist to seven-day streaks, computed on your device. • Field Training that waits for you to act, briefings that introduce each new resource, iPad keyboard shortcuts, VoiceOver map summaries and high-contrast overlays. Make the next turn count. Backburn is an offline wildfire incident-command strategy game for iPhone and iPad, with thirty authored incidents and tools for trying, reviewing and learning from your decisions. COMMAND THE MAP Select and move resources, build line, place water or retardant, burn out from completed line and evacuate housing groups. Each Advance passes twenty minutes. Working crews tire; HOLD lets them recover. An authored weather schedule shows when winds shift, gust fronts arrive, inversions lift and spotting pressure rises. REHEARSE BEFORE ADVANCING Decision Desk resolves the next turn in two copies: your current orders, or crews held in place. Strategy Lab explores up to six turns of three fixed policies. Neither changes your incident or its random sequence. PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF Every campaign incident and the Daily Incident save their map, orders, weather, clock and random state. Resume from the menu, briefing or Daily screen. Completed incidents can be reopened to review the report. COMPARE YOUR ATTEMPTS A restart keeps one previous attempt per scenario. Compare both recorded timelines and their acres, structures lost and line completed at the same turn. LEARN FROM ACTUAL RESULTS After-action reports state recorded growth, losses, injuries and score, plus any commendation earned. Passing a scenario and extinguishing all fire are different outcomes. The Field Guide explains the real rules, including the forecast, difficulty and Daily Incident. Thirty incident maps across grassland, chaparral, conifer, peat and interface fuels, with seeded spread and spotting, resource rosters and housing groups. Play in landscape on iPhone or iPad. No account, advertising, subscription or in-app purchases; gameplay works offline and progress stays on your device. Backburn is a fictional strategy game with a surface-fire model adapted for play. It is not a real-world fire forecast, emergency tool or professional training. The in-game forecast predicts only this game's next turn. There is no live weather feed, online leaderboard or app-managed cloud synchronization.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Radioactive at Free against Backburn's $0.99. On ads, in-app purchases, device support 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
Radioactive is free to download; Backburn costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Radioactive | Backburn |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 5.0 (9 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | — | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 9 — better | — |
| Update frequency | — | Every 4 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 118 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | REGGIE LEE SLABA | Robert Corbin |
In-app purchases
Radioactive
No in-app purchases
Backburn
No in-app purchases









