Comparison

Ponor vs Frontier Lord

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

Head to head
About

Ponor

Features
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Rovinj, a few years after Venice fell. The bura has closed the roads, not one shutter on the street is open, and the town is dying in its sleep. Whatever is doing it came up out of the hollow in the limestone that the town has always known better than to enter. Four people go down anyway. A harambaša who spent thirty years holding a line too narrow to run from. A smuggler who knows every hole in the wall. A glagolitic nun with her book. An old man who knows what you pour across a threshold. PONOR is a first-person, grid-based dungeon crawler in the old tradition — one tile at a time, four faces along the foot of the screen, and the world stopping into turns the moment something down there knows where you are. Thirteen floors, from the paving stones of the old town to the bottom of the pit beneath it. NO CREATURE HERE IS A BIGGER NUMBER Sixteen things live in the dark, and fourteen of them are a rule rather than a stat block. The rule is what you have to work out. The mora does not attack the waking. She waits for the party to lie down, and while she is near, sleeping costs you instead of restoring you. Iron goes through her like smoke; salt she will not cross — but the line has to cut the whole width of the passage, or she simply walks around it. A vukodlak is not hard to put down. It is hard to keep down, and fire will not do it. A hawthorn stake will. A vila laughs at steel and wants cold iron. A vodenjak lives only where the water stands, and everything it does is put you under it. A karakondžula climbs onto somebody's back, and you cannot hit it without hitting your own. The ala sleeps across the one hall you have to cross, and light is what wakes it. So you put the torch out and go past in the dark, or you do not go past at all. WHAT YOU CARRY BEATS WHAT YOU HAVE LEVELLED A handful of salt. A hawthorn stake. A piece of cold iron. A torch that burns on a clock and sometimes has to go out in a hurry. Those are the answers, and they run out. Rest is not free. Your save waits at the top of the floor rather than where you fell, so dying costs you the descent and never costs you the evening. Four characters, forty-one abilities and no class restrictions: anyone may carry anything, it just will not suit everyone. Every creature has a voice of its own. The game is in Croatian and English, and the folklore keeps its Croatian names in both. Everything ships inside the app, so Ponor plays with no network connection at all. No account, no registration, no leaderboard and no analytics. It is free and funded by ads, which a one-time in-app purchase removes, and your progress and settings stay on your device. Ponor is a horror game with scenes of violence and is not intended for children.

About

Frontier Lord

Features
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Raise a village at the edge of the map, gather heroes, and push the frontier back region by region. Frontier Lord is an idle strategy RPG. Your village works while you are away: woodcutters, farms, quarries and mines fill the storehouse, and your party marches out to clear dungeons and claim new land. Come back, collect, decide, and send them further. BUILD YOUR TOWN • Town Hall, houses, farms, sawmill, armory, tavern and more, each upgraded level by level • Put heroes in charge as managers and governors to make your town work better • Trade at the market, where prices rise and fall LEAD YOUR HEROES • Recruit heroes at the tavern and from Recruit Chests: Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary • Five classes, each with its own skills, gear and traits • Level them up, drill them, equip them and ascend the best beyond their cap CONQUER THE FRONTIER • Send your party into dungeons floor by floor, ending in boss fights • Claim regions, besiege rival fortresses, and defend what you hold • Answer the Council's matters, open the Vaults, and venture Beyond the Frontier COMPETE • Weekly tournaments against rival lords • The Arena, with ranks and rewards PLAY YOUR WAY • Progress keeps running for up to 8 hours while the game is closed • Play as a guest, or add your email to keep your realm on another phone • Your realm is saved to the cloud Frontier Lord is free to play. It has optional in-app purchases. Ads play only when you choose to watch one for a reward; an Ad-Free Ticket gives those rewards without watching. Diamonds can be earned by playing. Questions or feedback: mobile-empire@cstsolution.com Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://mobile-empire.cstsolution.com/privacy.html

Screenshots

Ponor4 screens
Frontier Lord4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Ponor at none against Frontier Lord's 7. Frontier Lord's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs fortnightly). 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Frontier Lord sells 7 one-off in-app purchases. Ponor asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Ponor ships an update fortnightly, Frontier Lord every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 6, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 4 level
Ponor versus Frontier Lord: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPonorFrontier Lord
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyFortnightlyEvery 3 days — better
AdsYesYes
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPod
Requires iOS15.015.0
Further details — not scored
Size21 MB257 MB
Age rating17+12+
DeveloperDesigner2 jdooChi Nham KHanh

In-app purchases

None

Ponor

No in-app purchases

7 purchases

Frontier Lord

One-time7
  • 100 Diamonds$0.99
  • Starter Pack$2.99
  • 50 Ad Tickets$4.99
Show 4 more
  • 550 Diamonds$4.99
  • Ad-Free Ticket$9.99
  • 1200 Diamonds$9.99
  • Lifetime Ad-Free Ticket$49.99

Questions

Is Ponor free?
Ponor is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Frontier Lord free?
Frontier Lord is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Ponor or Frontier Lord have ads?
Both Ponor and Frontier Lord show ads.
Which is updated more often, Ponor or Frontier Lord?
Ponor ships an update fortnightly, and Frontier Lord every 3 days. Most recently, Ponor was updated on October 31, 2026 and Frontier Lord on November 6, 2026.

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