Report updated May 20, 2026

Best of Us is an established games app that is free with in-app purchases. With a 3.5/5 rating from 265 reviews, it shows polarized user reception. Users particularly appreciate narrative depth and choice-driven plot progression, though lack of visual feedback and ui friction remains a common concern.

What is Best of Us?

Best of Us is a text-based interactive novel for fans of superhero fiction, delivered via the ChoiceScript engine on iOS and Android.

Users hire the app for deep, choice-driven narrative agency that graphical superhero games lack, serving the need for long-form, imagination-fueled storytelling.

Current Momentum

v1.0 · 4mo ago

Maintenance
  • Ships minor stability updates.
  • Maintains long-term ChoiceScript framework.

Active Nemesis

Fragmented niche

No dominant direct rival identified yet — see Other Rivals below.

Other Rivals

The Eagle's Heir
The Hero of Kendrickstone
Vampire: The Masquerade - CoNY
MY HERO ULTRA IMPACT

7-Day Rank Pulse 🇺🇸

Games

No ranking data

Role PlayingGrossing

Rating Pulse 🇺🇸

Recent User Mood

What makes this app unique?

What Does It Look Like?

Loading...

What Are The Key Features?

Choice-based narrative engineStandard

Interactive text-based novel where user decisions determine the plot progression and character outcomes

Accessibility font settingsDifferentiator

Customizable typography options including Helvetica and OpenDyslexic for improved readability

ChoiceScript platform integrationStandard

Engine built on the ChoiceScript language, allowing for consistent text-based interactive fiction delivery

How much does it cost?

Freemium
  • Free to play
  • Ad-supported

Freemium model utilizing ad-supported play to monetize the user base without an upfront purchase price.

Who Built It?

Hosted Games app icon 1
Hosted Games app icon 2
Hosted Games app icon 3
Hosted Games app icon 4

Hosted Games

(3.3K)

Empowering authors to create and publish interactive text-based gamebooks using a proprietary scripting language. Providing a platform for narrative-driven roleplaying experiences.

Portfolio

13

Apps

Free 10Paid 2
Games17%
Role Playing17%

What other apps does Hosted Games make?

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Explore the full Hosted Games report

Portfolio breakdown, audience, momentum, and every app published by Hosted Games.

Go deeper

What do users think recently?

Medium confidence · Latest 100 of 265 total reviews analyzed

How did the latest release land?

Overall
3.5/ 5
(265)
Current version
3.4/ 5
-0.1 vs overall
(24)
Main signal post-update: lack of visual feedback and UI friction.

What is the recent mood?

Mixed

Recent user voice shows a mixed sentiment. Users appreciate narrative depth and choice-driven plot progression, but report lack of visual feedback and ui friction.

What Users Love

Narrative depth and choice-driven plot progression

What Frustrates Users

Lack of visual feedback and UI friction

What Users Want

Cross-platform save functionality

View the full user-sentiment analysis

Mood gauge, ratings & review-volume history, every praise / complaint / request, and sentiment over time.

Go deeper

What is the competitive landscape for Best of Us?

Where is it available?

Localized markets (1)

United States

How's The Games Market?

**Pricing Strategy**: Freemium model utilizing ad-supported play to monetize the user base without an upfront purchase price. **Target Audience**: Fans of interactive fiction and text-based roleplaying games who prefer narrative-heavy experiences over graphical gameplay.

The rivals identified

Same space(4)

MY HERO ULTRA IMPACT icon

Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.

4.3(30.2K)

This app competes for the same superhero-themed audience, though it pivots from text-based narrative to high-fidelity visual combat.

Differentiators

  • Utilizes high-quality 3D cinematics and character animations that dwarf text-only interactive novel experiences.
  • Features complex 3-on-3 turn-based combat mechanics that provide deeper gameplay loops than static choice-based stories.
  • Leverages a massive established anime IP brand to drive significantly higher user acquisition and retention.

Both titles target the interactive fiction market, focusing on deep narrative branching and player-driven consequences within established lore.

Differentiators

  • Incorporates professional-grade character art and atmospheric UI design to enhance the visual storytelling experience.
  • Offers a more polished, premium production value that justifies its position as a standalone narrative title.
  • Provides a focused, shorter-form narrative experience that appeals to players seeking high-quality, contained story arcs.

This title is a direct competitor in the text-based interactive novel space, utilizing the same ChoiceScript engine and genre conventions.

Differentiators

  • Features a robust stat-based gameplay system that provides more tangible feedback on player choices than Best of Us.
  • Offers extensive accessibility settings, including font customization, which improves readability for long-form text readers.
  • Benefits from a long-standing library of titles that creates a cohesive ecosystem for interactive fiction fans.

As a fellow ChoiceScript title, it competes for the same niche audience of readers who prioritize branching narratives over graphics.

Differentiators

  • Includes advanced cross-platform save state functionality, allowing users to transition between devices without losing progress.
  • Provides deeper character customization options regarding gender and orientation, increasing player agency and immersion.
  • Maintains a consistent, proven UI framework that minimizes friction for users familiar with the ChoiceScript ecosystem.

Compare Best of Us against every rival

All rivals in one side-by-side table — identity, store metrics, ratings & sentiment, and strategic intel — plus a head-to-head page for each.

Go deeper

The outtake for Best of Us

Strengths to defend, gaps to attack

Core Strengths

  • 127,000-word branching narrative sustains high player agency
  • Accessibility font settings improve readability for long-form readers

Critical Frictions

  • 0.125-star Android-iOS rating gap indicates inconsistent performance
  • No cloud-save functionality creates churn risk during device transitions

Growth Levers

  • Implement cross-platform save states to reduce churn
  • Introduce stat-based feedback loops to increase replayability

Market Threats

  • MY HERO ULTRA IMPACT's 3D cinematics set a visual standard that makes text-only titles appear dated
  • Choice of Games library ecosystem creates higher switching costs for readers

What are the next best moves?

highInvest

Ship cloud-save functionality because it is the top-requested missing feature → reduce churn on device transitions

User sentiment data highlights progress loss as a primary frustration point.

Trade-off: Push the UI accessibility refresh to Q3 to prioritize retention-critical save logic.

mediumPivot

Audit Android-iOS rating gap because the 0.125-star delta suggests platform-specific performance issues → stabilize baseline rating

The rating disparity between platforms indicates an unaddressed technical or UX friction on Android.

Trade-off: Pause new narrative content development to focus engineering on platform parity.

A counter-intuitive read

The lack of graphics is not a weakness but a moat, as it forces the user to invest their own imagination, creating a deeper psychological lock-in than high-fidelity 3D competitors.

Feature Gaps vs Competitors

  • Cross-platform save state functionality (available in The Eagle's Heir but missing here)
  • Stat-based gameplay feedback system (available in The Hero of Kendrickstone but missing here)

Key Takeaways

Best of Us holds its audience through deep narrative branching but risks obsolescence due to a lack of modern UX features like cloud-saves, so the PM should prioritize cross-platform parity to defend against more polished genre rivals.

Where Is It Heading?

Stable

The interactive fiction market is consolidating around titles that offer both deep narrative and modern quality-of-life features. Best of Us remains stable but exposed, as the lack of cross-platform parity makes it vulnerable to rivals that offer a more seamless experience.

The absence of cloud-save functionality causes recurring user frustration during device transitions, which directly erodes long-term retention and platform-wide rating stability.

Recent updates focus on stability rather than feature expansion, indicating the title is currently in a maintenance phase rather than an active growth cycle.

Disclosure: Independent intel to help mobile builders succeed.

AI-powered analysis with editorial review, built from publicly available sources. Marlvel.ai is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Best of Us, its developer, the app publisher, Apple, or Google Play. All trademarks, logos, and screenshots referenced remain the property of their respective owners.

What's new

The app has shifted from a monetization-focused crisis to a technical-parity deficit, with users now prioritizing cross-platform save states over pricing concerns.

shifted

Primary User Complaint Shift

added

Cloud-Save Weakness

declined

Rating Adjustment

shifted

Competitive Benchmarking

Cite this report

Marlvel.ai. “Best of Us Intelligence Report.” Updated May 20, 2026. https://marlvel.ai/apps/best-of-us

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