River Generals vs Xiangqi Academy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
River Generals
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River Generals brings traditional Chinese chess to iPhone and iPad with a bright, tactile wooden board and controls designed for touch. Play locally with a friend or challenge Easy, Medium, and Hard computer opponents. Optional fair per-player clocks, legal-move markers, undo, staged hints, move review, captured-piece summaries, and automatic match recovery keep every game easy to follow. Learn all seven piece types through 21 guided lessons. Test your tactics in 20 validated palace puzzles, including multi-step positions where the defender replies, and return for a deterministic daily challenge. Earn local XP, piece mastery, achievements, statistics, and cosmetic rewards without an account. River Generals works offline. It includes English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, screen-reader board actions, large-text support, high contrast, reduced motion, independent effects, original adaptive ancient-China-inspired music, sound effects, and haptics.
Xiangqi Academy
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Xiangqi Academy teaches you Chinese chess, then lets you play it. THE ACADEMY: 127 GUIDED LESSONS One hundred and twenty-seven lessons, starting from how a single piece moves and ending with technique that decides real games: the cannon that needs a screen to capture, the horse whose leg can be blocked, the elephant that cannot cross the river, and the mating patterns every player has to recognise. Each lesson sets up a position and asks you for the move, so you learn by playing rather than by reading. Some are two-move combinations where the engine answers your first move, and the endgame lessons hand you a won position and ask you to actually win it against the engine. PUZZLES EVERY DAY - A daily puzzle, the same for everyone, worked out on your device from the date. - Past puzzles: the last 30 days, kept for practice. - Speed Mates: as many mates in one as you can find in three minutes, with three lives. Your best run has its own leaderboard. LEARN FROM YOUR OWN GAMES When a xiangqi, chess or caro game ends, Review game lets the engine go through every move, mark the mistakes and blunders, and show the move it would have played, with a graph of who was better. FOUR BOARD GAMES - Xiangqi (Chinese chess): the full 9x10 board with river and palace, and all seven piece types. - Co Up (flipped xiangqi): the same board, but every piece starts face down and shuffled. You find out what you own by moving it. Same rules, completely different game. - Chess: castling, en passant and promotion to all four pieces. - Caro (five in a row): the pen-and-paper classic, on a full grid. PLAY HOW YOU LIKE - Five AI levels for each game, all running on your device, so it works with no connection at all. - Two players on one device: pass the phone, or sit face to face and turn the far side's pieces towards your opponent. No accounts needed. - Undo, a full move list, draw offers against the AI, and legal-move hints you can switch off when you no longer want them. NO SIGN-UP AND NO ONLINE MATCHES There are no accounts and no online opponents: you play the AI on your device, or the person sitting next to you. The only things you create that leave your device are your two leaderboard entries: a display name and a country flag you choose yourself, plus how many of the lessons you have finished and your best Speed Mates score. You can delete them from Settings at any time. The app also serves ads and reports anonymous crash and gameplay data - the Privacy Policy lists exactly what. Free, supported by ads. There are no in-app purchases of any kind. Interface fully translated into 15 languages. The 127 Academy lessons are written in English and Vietnamese.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: River Generals at none against Xiangqi Academy's shown. River Generals also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 15.0). On price, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | River Generals | Xiangqi Academy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | โ | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No โ better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 โ better | 15.0 |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 98 MB | 69 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Artticks Pte Ltd | DUY ANH NGUYEN |
In-app purchases
River Generals
No in-app purchases
Xiangqi Academy
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is River Generals free?
Is Xiangqi Academy free?
Do River Generals or Xiangqi Academy have ads?
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