SplitLight vs ArcadeOS
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SplitLight
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You are the only light. There is a corridor in the dark, and your beam is what shows the way. Sweep the light and you see what waits ahead and to the sides — a wall, a gap, a column. Two thumbs. The left one moves you, the right one aims the light. The rest is down to you and your reflexes: dodge the walls, use the pickups. THREE WAYS TO PLAY CLASSIC — endless, no upgrades, no mercy. Your record is yours alone. DAILY — one world a day, the same one for everybody on earth. Same corridor, same obstacles, one leaderboard — but the streak breaks the moment you skip a day. A new world at midnight UTC. ROGUE — the run that keeps something. Metres become a bank, the bank buys a longer or a wider beam, and every upgrade costs more than the last. Your beam upgrades stay with you — always. WHAT THE DARK DOES BACK Pickups change the beam mid-run: wider, narrower, longer, shorter — and two that change the world instead, speeding it up or slowing it down. Glass columns let the light through and kill you anyway. The dimmed strip behind one is your only warning. Fog eats the reach of your beam metre by metre; inside it you see less than you did a second ago. And every few hundred metres the world turns inside out: black becomes white, white becomes black. TWO SCREENS, ONE DARK SplitLight ships for iPhone and Apple Watch. On the phone you play with two thumbs; on the watch the Digital Crown is your hand and the beam sweeps on its own. The watch version is not a companion widget — it is the same game, rebuilt for a screen the size of a fingertip, and one of the few real arcade games on the platform. BUILT SMALL ON PURPOSE Two colours. No text on the field. No tutorial — the first run is the tutorial. No ads. No subscription. No timers, no energy, no accounts, nothing to watch and nothing to wait for. The game does not collect your data — there is no analytics SDK inside, and your progress lives on your device. Free the whole way through: classic, daily and rogue, all of it, from the first metre to the last. One optional purchase unlocks endless beam upgrades past the fifth level in rogue — buy it only if you have already hit that ceiling and want more. That single purchase is the entire business model. Game Center leaderboards and achievements on both platforms. Turn off the lights. Turn on the flashlight.
ArcadeOS
Experience a full arcade with 65 original retro-style games on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. Enjoy diverse genres from racing to RPGs, all playable offline with instant resume and authentic chip audio. New games are added seasonally.
- 65 original retro-style games
- Playable on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch
- Offline play with no internet required
- Instant resume for all games
- Authentic chip audio
- New games added seasonally
- No accounts, ads, or tracking
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Welcome to ArcadeOS — a whole arcade in your pocket, and now on your wrist. 65 hand-picked original games, each one its own cartridge: kart racers, ninja action, gothic pinball, paper-craft RPGs, sky shooters, momentum platformers, run-and-gun, belt brawlers, puzzle boxes, rhythm, and full 3D adventures. Every game is an original creation in the spirit of the golden age of consoles — drawn in code, scored with real chip audio, and built to be picked up in seconds. CHERRY EDITION 23 new games join the shelf, every one rated five stars by our testers before it shipped — look for the cherry on the cartridge. Highlights: Reefjack's lantern-tide run-and-gun, Thornhollow's gorge platforming, Quiet Falls' suburban-oddball RPG, Emberline's three-winter family saga, Cascabel's commedia brawler, Ironvane's vertical shooter, and Crestline GP's speedboat regatta. APPLE WATCH ArcadeOS now ships with an Apple Watch app. Three games are built for the wrist and the Digital Crown: Redline Ridge (crown hops lanes, hold to burn), Sunstrip (crown steers, tap to shift) and Ironvane (crown flies, hold to charge, tap to call your wingman). Runs on its own — no iPhone needed nearby. FEATURES 65 games — every one with its own hand-crafted cartridge art New home screen: your games as icons, with folders you make yourself Gold-star collection: beat a game, earn its golden seal. Collect them all Authentic chip sound in every game — square waves, the real thing Instant resume — every game remembers exactly where you left off No accounts. No ads. No tracking. No internet required. Just games New games ship in seasonal fruit editions — Cherry is the first ArcadeOS games are living software: they grow new levels, mechanics, and polish over time. Your shelf gets better while you sleep. Powered by RetroApps.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: ArcadeOS at none against SplitLight's 1. SplitLight's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs every 3 weeks). On price, ads, 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
Both are free to download. SplitLight sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. ArcadeOS asks for nothing beyond the download.
SplitLight ships an update weekly, ArcadeOS every 3 weeks. Both last shipped on October 3, 2026.
| Parameter | SplitLight | ArcadeOS |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Number of ratings | — | 1 — better |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Every 3 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | — | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 — better | 26.5 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 2 MB | 20 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Pavel Gagarin | RetroApps LLC |
In-app purchases
SplitLight
- Full Version$3.99
ArcadeOS
No in-app purchases








