Swarmfall vs Iron Bastion
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Swarmfall
Defend your planet in this roguelike auto-battle game where your turrets automatically attack. Strategize menu-based decisions under pressure to upgrade defenses and fuse weapons against an encroaching swarm.
- Automatic turret targeting and firing
- Menu-based strategic decision-making
- Leveling up with card-based upgrades
- Turret fusion for new weapon types
- Risk/reward credit extraction system
- Diverse enemy types with resistances
- Progressive difficulty with depth modifiers
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Your turrets fire themselves. Every decision that matters is yours. Swarmfall is a roguelike tower defense on the last living world. Turrets on the planet's rim find their own targets: you never aim and never tap an enemy. You choose what to build, what to fuse, and when to walk away with the haul, while the swarm closes in. LEVEL UP, CHOOSE ONE Kills feed experience. Every level deals a hand of cards and you take one: a new turret, an upgrade, or a synergy that rewires the whole build. Deep Roots doubles the damage to anything near the planet and triples it on anything latched on. Living Mantle regrows the ground under you. NINE GUNS ON THE RIM The Reef Lance locks one target and ramps to 2.6x the longer it holds. The Ember Spitter lobs shells that detonate and leave survivors burning. The Tide Coil chains arc bolts through anything that clusters. The Spore Launcher sends homing seekers that pick their own victims. The Shard Battery shreds at point blank and nowhere else. The Blight Garden plants a rot that leaps to whoever stood nearby when its host dies. The Tide Anchor rings like a struck bell and slows everything its wave passes through. The Rime Lattice stacks cold until a body hard freezes, and a heavy hit shatters it into everything around it. The Undertow Maw opens a gravity well on the thickest pack, drags it into one knot, and crushes it. TWENTY-TWO EVOLUTIONS Raise a turret to level 2 with the right partner mounted and the two fuse. Reef Lance and Ember Spitter become the SOLAR LANCE, a beam that sets its victims on fire. Ember Spitter and Spore Launcher become the BROODFIRE MORTAR, shells that release seeker drones on impact. Tide Anchor and Undertow Maw become the MAELSTROM, rings that drag the swarm instead of slowing it. BANK IT, OR PUSH Every credit you earn in a dive is at risk until you get it out. Extract from the pause menu whenever you choose and you bank all of it. Die down there and the deep keeps half. Kill a monarch and it pays a bounty and knits 30% of your planet back together, and the next wave is already coming. A SWARM THAT CLOSES IN Thirteen creatures, from cinder mites up to the Deep Mother herself, drawn in bioluminescent deep-water dark. Elites rise wearing afflictions: Veiled, Frenzied, Gorged, Budding, Weeping, and the first of each in a dive is called out the moment it surfaces. Everything resists one damage family and folds to another, and the briefing shows which for everything you have already killed. The swarm reveals itself a species at a time and comes at you from wider angles as the dive goes on: one front, then an arc, then a pincer, then a full ring. THE DESCENT Eight depths each add one permanent modifier as you unlock them. Elites rise more often. The mantle holds less life. The swarm moves faster. Monarchs rise in pairs. Elites carry two afflictions at once. The swarm's numbers swell by 30%. How deep you can still hold is the real score. EVERY DIVE COUNTS Banked credits buy permanent upgrades in Research. Turrets unlock by playing, through lifetime kills and your longest dive, never through purchases. Daily directives pay out for specific work: burn down 150 fire-family creatures, hold the line to 6:00, slay a Deep Mother. Records keep your season. The bestiary fills in as you meet what is down there. NOTHING BETWEEN YOU AND THE GAME No ads. No energy timers. No login. Plays offline. Your save follows your Apple ID through iCloud, so a new iPhone or a reinstall picks up where you left off. The one thing for sale is the Commander's Commission, an optional subscription: 2× speed and dives by seed, and nothing that touches a run. Swarmfall collects nothing about you. Under a quarter mantle, every gun on the rim opens up at once. Last Stand is not something you buy. It is the world screaming. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://austinnormanai.github.io/swarmfall-support/privacy.html
Iron Bastion
Engage in fast-paced, strategic tower defense roguelite gameplay. Build and upgrade your automated bastion to withstand escalating waves of enemies. Adapt your strategy with randomized upgrades for each focused run.
- Fast portrait gameplay
- Automatic targeting with strategic decisions
- Multiple difficulty modes
- Randomized roguelite upgrades
- Persistent progression
- Offline play
- No ads or in-app purchases
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The battlefield never stops. Your bastion fires automatically—but survival depends on the choices you make. Iron Bastion is a modern military tower-defense roguelite built for fast, focused runs. Destroy advancing combat units, spend battlefield credits on tactical upgrades, and select powerful new capabilities as each operation escalates. CHOOSE YOUR THREAT Start as a Beginner, test your command experience, or face the brutal Pro deployment. Each difficulty changes enemy pressure, rewards, and the pace of battle. BUILD A DEADLIER BASTION Improve caliber, reload speed, armor, critical systems, and more during every run. Combine upgrades into a build that can withstand the next wave. ADAPT BETWEEN WAVES Choose one of three roguelite upgrades and reshape your strategy. Every decision changes how your defense platform performs under pressure. SURVIVE AN ESCALATING WAR Enemy strength adapts as the battle continues. Elite threats and increasingly punishing waves prevent a successful defense from becoming comfortable. FEATURES - Fast portrait gameplay designed for iPhone - Automatic targeting with meaningful strategic decisions - Beginner, Experienced, and Pro difficulty modes - Randomized roguelite upgrade choices - Persistent progression between runs - Offline play with no account required - No ads and no in-app purchases in version 1.0 How long can your bastion hold the line?
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Iron Bastion at none against Swarmfall's 1. Iron Bastion also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Swarmfall's advantage is ratings volume (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, review sentiment, ads 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
Both are free to download. Swarmfall sells 1 in-app purchase, starting at $2.99 per month. Iron Bastion asks for nothing beyond the download.
Iron Bastion holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 1 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
| Parameter | Swarmfall | Iron Bastion |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (3 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 5 days | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 27 MB | 5 MB |
| Age rating | 9+ | 12+ |
| Developer | AUSTIN ALLEN NORMAN | Askar Fuzaylov |
Customer experience
Swarmfall
Iron Bastion
In-app purchases
Swarmfall
- Commander's Commission$2.991 Month
Iron Bastion
No in-app purchases









