FINAL
FORTRESS
The whole game is the screen of an old terminal: green text, one cursor, and you, the commandant of the last fortress.
Match tiles to finish the day's tasks. Each task brings supplies. Spend them to repair five systems: reactor, hydroponics, antenna, armory, infirmary.
There is a story in the log. Read it or skip it. Repair the antenna and you will see a board with other players' stations. It updates once a day.
- ADS NONE, BY DESIGN
- LIVES, TIMERS, ENERGY NONE, BY DESIGN
- OFFLINE FULL
- PURCHASES COSMETIC ONLY
- VOICEOVER COMPLETE
- PRICE FREE
HOW TO PLAY
THE WATCH
Press BEGIN WATCH. The main screen is the fortress: the stores on their shelves, the STATIONS line, the FIELD line, and a console at the bottom with the network, the archive, AI MADNESS, the SUPPLY DEPOT and SETTINGS. Everything is a line of text. A line that ends in a mark can be pressed.
MISSIONS
DISPATCH A SQUAD opens the list. Each mission is one match-3 task, and each kind pays its own supplies; the lines under it say what it asks for and what it brings. CONVOY is always open. ANOMALY SWEEP needs the armory, LISTENING POST the antenna, ARCHIVE DIG the reactor. A dark mission says underneath what would open it.
THE BOARD
Match three to clear them. Four in a line, an L or a T, or five in a line charge a special tile, and two specials swapped into each other fire something bigger. Once the task is met you may keep going a little; the terminal closes the shift on its own. Run out of moves and the packet is lost: run it again, nothing is taken away. ABANDON THE TASK, pressed twice, leaves any board. New things turn up on the board as the watches go by, and every other run is a plain board. The OPERATING MANUAL on the dispatch screen has every rule, if you ever want one.
REPAIRS
STATIONS opens the systems. Each one is a bill, what it needs against what you have, with the short shelves in amber. Press the bill and the game marks the mission that pays it. A system is repaired once and stays up. The antenna is the one that changes the most: it joins the fortress to the network.
WEATHER AND THE FIELD
The FIELD line is the meteo post. It reads the phone's barometer, and when a pressure front passes over the fortress the ground opens for two hours: SALVAGE DIG appears on the dispatch list, and disappears again when the front is gone. Digs pay components, the one thing the annex stations need; in a dig, clear the bottom cell of a column to unearth what is under it. Without a barometer the post runs on forecasts, and a front still comes now and then. Anomaly sweeps also bring a few components once you are some way in.
THE SIGNALS ANNEX
The second part of the systems screen: BAROGRAPH, MODEM and DF ARRAY. They are repaired like any other system, but they need components. The modem sends your callsign as sound with TRANSMIT CALLSIGN and listens for another phone with OPEN THE MIC. The DF array looks for other fortresses nearby. A sensor runs only while its station is open and only after you press its action, and SETTINGS, SENSORS can cut each one.
THE STORY AND THE NETWORK
Every few tasks the terminal has something to say, in the debrief; everything it says is kept in the ARCHIVE. Read it or skip it: nothing is missed, only put off. Repair the antenna and the board fills with other stations. It updates once a day, and it is only to look at.
AI MADNESS
On the console. It deals a shift where the rules bend: STAND THIS SHIFT plays it, DEAL ANOTHER draws a new one. Every shift has a code: COPY THE CODE to share yours, ENTER A CODE to open a friend's. Nothing is banked and nothing is lost.
A QUIETER BOARD
CALM RELAY in SETTINGS, CONSOLE softens the board's flashes and haptics. The same screen switches on the lock screen notice for a pressure front, which stays off unless you ask. A home screen widget shows the fortress at a glance.
SUPPORT
QUESTIONS
HOW DO I RESTORE MY PURCHASES?
From the hub, open SUPPLY DEPOT under the CONSOLE heading and press RESTORE PURCHASES. Anything already fitted to your Apple Account comes back. The game has no account and no login, so there is nothing else to sign into.
CAN I CHANGE THE FORTRESS NAME OR MY CALLSIGN?
The fortress, the terminal and your callsign are assigned at the start. Renaming is one of the additional options fitted at the SUPPLY DEPOT. Once it is fitted, the depot opens the MEMORY CHIP screen: uppercase letters, digits and dashes. Your callsign is shown to every station on the network, so the server checks it before it is published. Callsigns that break common standards of decency are never published on the board.
THE PICTURE FLICKERS. CAN I TURN THE EFFECTS OFF?
SETTINGS, then STABLE PHOSPHOR to ON. It stops the flicker and the grain. The system Reduce Motion setting does the same thing on its own. The tube itself is fitted at the SUPPLY DEPOT, where PAPER is the brightest and costs nothing.
VOICEOVER AND ACCESSIBILITY
The game is fully playable with VoiceOver: every terminal line is one element, and each readout is announced with its label. Dynamic Type is supported to the accessibility sizes, where rows drop their leader and stack instead of crushing. Alerts always carry a mark, never color alone. Sound and haptics can each be switched off in SETTINGS.
REFUNDS
All purchases go through Apple, so refunds do too: request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. We never see your payment details and cannot issue a refund ourselves. If something you paid for did not unlock, write to us and we will help you get it working.
DELETING MY DATA
SETTINGS, then ERASE EVERYTHING, and press again to confirm. This removes the fortress from the device and its row from the network board. If the board does not answer, the local data is erased anyway and the terminal tells you the board record remains; write to us with your callsign and we will remove it. SETTINGS also has EXPORT A COPY, which writes out everything held: callsign, fortress record, settings.
NOTE: THE GAME IS PLAYABLE WITHOUT A NETWORK. THE ONLY ONLINE PART IS THE BOARD, AND IT IS SILENT UNTIL THE ANTENNA IS REPAIRED.
PRIVACY POLICY
Final Fortress works offline. There is no account, no login, no advertising, no analytics and no third party tracking of any kind. Your save lives on your device.
WHAT LEAVES THE DEVICE
- CALLSIGN PUBLISHED ON THE BOARD
- TASKS COMPLETED PUBLISHED ON THE BOARD
- RANDOM FORTRESS ID HELD, NOT SHOWN
The fortress identifier is a random value generated on the device. It is not your name, your device identifier or your Apple Account, and it is never linked to you. Apple describes this as data not linked to you, and that is how it is declared on the App Store.
WHAT NEVER LEAVES THE DEVICE
No name, email address, contacts, photos, location, advertising identifier, device identifier, crash log or usage statistic. There is no chat and no way to send a message to another player, so nothing you write can reach anyone.
PURCHASES
Purchases are handled entirely by Apple. We receive confirmation that a purchase is valid and nothing else: no card details, no billing address, no Apple Account identity. Tips through Ko-fi or Plisio happen on their own sites, after you leave this page, and nothing about them reaches this site or the game.
DELETION
SETTINGS, then ERASE EVERYTHING. The save is removed from the device and the row is removed from the board. If the board cannot be reached, write to us below with your callsign and we will remove it by hand.
CHILDREN
The game is rated 13+. It collects nothing that could identify anyone, of any age.