Last updated on January 2nd, 2026 at 10:04 pm
Ark Nova – Strategy Game Review
Ark Nova is a Strategy/Board game from Dire Wolf Digital LLC, first launched in 19th June 2025.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 678+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Ark Nova Stand Out
Plan and build a modern, scientifically managed zoo to support conservation projects in an acclaimed strategy board game.
In Ark Nova, you will plan and design a modern, scientifically managed zoo. With the ultimate goal of owning the most successful zoological establishment, you will build enclosures, accommodate animals, and support conservation projects all over the world. Specialists and unique buildings will help you in achieving this goal.
At the heart of Ark Nova are 255 cards featuring animals, specialists, unique enclosures, and conservation projects, each with a particular ability. Use them to increase the appeal and scientific reputation of your zoo and to collect conservation points. Each player has a set of action cards, which you will use and upgrade to carry out your plans.
Each player has a set of five action cards to manage their gameplay, and the power of an action is determined by the slot the card currently occupies. The cards are:
BUILD: Allows you to build standard or special enclosures, kiosks, and pavilions.
ANIMALS: Allows you to accommodate animals in your zoo.
CARDS: Allows you to gain new zoo cards (animals, sponsors, and conservation project cards).
ASSOCIATION: Allows your association workers to carry out different tasks.
SPONSORS: Allows you to play a sponsor card in your zoo or to raise money.
With high replayability and rich components, Ark Nova provides a remarkable gaming experience that will bring the game to the table again and again.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Ark Nova is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 18th September 2025
Recent improvements include:
General bug fixes and compatibility updates.
Download & Availability
Ark Nova is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This is a solid adaptation of a fantastic board game. The UI makes it difficult to keep up with the overall game state given how much info is hidden behind tabs.
Just played our first mobile game and it was so much smoother than we anticipated it would be. Totally worth it.
This is such a complicated game for many people, so like us, we think some people would find it difficult to play when everything is so small. We do so much better when Im able to see everything all at once without having to click on each card to see what it does. But its still a great alternative to playing solo in our opinion, especially for a game we have trouble getting to the table because of its length.
Blown away by the quality of this app the gameplay is smooth and the ai gameplay and challenges are really fun definitely worth the cost.
Only thing we would like added is an automatically scrolling activity log. If it already exists we dont know how to activate it.
First we found Dune Imperium and then we saw that this is even more popular. And then we saw YouTube reviews of it and they were all glowing. And Dune Imperium is brilliant on multiple levels. Just the sound design alone is worth the money. Well, let us tell you, this game is amazing. Dire Wolf has an awesome model for taking board games and delivering them. This is such a well done execution of a multi-part game. And it plays on your iPad, Mac, . It just sings along. And it has a variable AI, unlike some of their other games, we actually win a lot on easier levels. Not that it matters because youre mostly playing against yourself even when youre playing with others. At first the complexity seems nuts, but after a while you wish there was more. Like a pool that seems cold at first but then you dont notice at all. The challenges address that really well, and are worth the price of admission alone. There are a ton of them and they have variations for each one. If youre on the fence and you like complex games, dont even think about it. This is the deal of the century. So much content for so little money. The game design is beautiful. And then the computerization of that is done perfectly. Im going to end up buying every game that these guys make. Warning, this type of challenge can get addicting.
Love the game so far, our only wish is that some of the font, icons, and symbols could be larger. Outside of that its a wonderful digital version of such a great game. Well done.
Awesome game but every time we open the app to an async game already loaded it spins for thirty secs and then errors out. Repro: open async game, close app, open app, wait.
Excellent game but there are still many bugs that need fixing. Come on devs give us an update with fixes.
When the game doesnt glitch, it plays OK. AI does some generally suboptimal play to just interfere with players, such as one ai opponent needlessly getting cards or sponsoring for cash, just so the next ai can force the break, especially if you are over the card limit. The real issue is random bugs. Example is situation where it let us keep cards over the limit, aaaannnd then also never let us access the cards. A two bugs for the price of one. Also, it frequently (1 x for ~3 games) wont let you do valid actions. Especially when you get extra actions. Could we provide more specifics? No. After all, they dont pay us to test their products and, frankly, it is easier to resign and restart or just play solo on board game arena. Shame, because the app looks pretty. And, at least, when not glitching, it plays better than just normal solo. Hopefully they will sort stuff out quickly.
Im not typically one to write a review but this is an absolute top notch adaptation of Ark Nova, a game we love. Its incredibly intuitive and, in our experience, seamless. Additionally, the devs were very responsive with an update to bugs identified early on. Great work.
Excellent game with lots of replay ability.
DireWolf simply does not miss. Another excellent adaptation.
Dire wolf makes some of the best Digital board game adaptations in the industry and this game is no exception. They have fixed the initial bugs and since then, we have really enjoyed playing this app. If you havent played Ark Nova, its one of the top rated board games in the board game hobby. This app is a great way to learn it because its a rather complex game.
Our all-time favorite board game is finally an app! For relatively bigger board with several moving parts, they do a good job at organizing it all.
We love Dire Wolfs board game adaptations, and this is no exception. Ive never played Ark Nova before. Theres a lot going on, but after playing through one game we can see that Im going to like this. Try it out if youre a fan of games that have lots of systems working togetherclosest analogue (as everyone says) is Terraforming Mars. If you love TM, youll probably love this, and vice versa.
UI is a bit crowded and not super intuitive to navigate at first. This could really use the Marine Worlds expansion; hope that is added soon.
This game is pretty complicated and we think they did a good job making the app as simple as it could be, given all the components. We think theres some wasted real estate on iPad (below your opponents player info) and we find the board game tracks a little clunky and hard to read. Some graphics in the game also dont appear to be hi-res, which is surprising. Our biggest and actual complaint is that the AI player is way, way too strong. We rarely win on a Medium game. Our boyfriend can attest to the same experience. Not very balanced.
The game crashes a lot. Not a big deal since we can reopen and it picks up where it left off. A bigger problem is that we encountered a bug several times where the app prompts us to Resolve your effects, but offers no options to resolve. This happened most recently while stopped at the marker which instructs us to discard one final scoring card. However, the window to allow us to select a card was never displayed. We tried toggling all the windows, clicking on the final scoring cards themselves, reverting our turn then closing the app then reopening and trying again. Nothing worked. We were dependent on the game opening the correct window but it never did and we had to abort the game.
We love Ark Nova, and play a lot with friends on Board Game Arena. We dont mind the smaller screen size, thats expected for mobile app. However, the adaptation has a surprising number of bugs, a few game-breaking. For many issues, you must quit and restart to reset the interface because icons or effects will disappear or happen without notice. We mustve submitted a half dozen bugs via feedback by now, too tired to record them all. The BGA adaptation remains superior in all aspects. Hopefully, Dire Wolf will patch regularly. While we like the game, Im a little disappointed considering the developers history. Will update review after patches.
We LOVE the board game, but this version is completely unusable for us. Make so cards so they can be magnified in ANY way, click to zoom, pinch to zoom Anything.
App is fantastic. On an iPad at least. Not sure about smaller screens.
Phenomenal game and app! Direwolf does it again.
Why is everything so small on the iPad? Is it the pc interface but on an iPad ? Because why.
We were familiar with the board game but needed a refresher so we played the 3 tutorials pretty quick. If you are not familiar with the game, you might need to go through the tutorials a couple times as there is a lot going on to make sense of. We think people who have played the game in real life will enjoy it here. People totally new to it might find it challenging to learn, even with the tutorials, but if they stick with it, it is a very rewarding experience and satisfying game to master.
UI is well designed, not many bugs and the team fix quick. This is a very good game for euro-game lovers. Recommend for everyone. Cant wait for the aquarium dlc.
We wish that the AI opponent got smarter as difficulty increased instead of getting more handicap. Other than that, its great playing Ark Nova on a phone.
Needs a lot of work. Too much wasted space on iPad and iPhone. The 3D board view adds nothing and is distracting. All the blue glitter animations should be removed. Uses versions of end game cards that are outdated. AI hard is quite easy. The fact that you cant see all of your board and the cards at the same time is inexcusable. Target size for actions and other UI elements are too small. Title of end game cards not displayed in minimized version even though there is plenty of space. Rotation controls are backwards. Right hand control should be clockwise rotation.
Great implementation overall, lots of fun, good animations and choice of modes. Look forward to Marine expansion being added. One UI suggestion would be to add a toggle in settings to enable larger UI buttons for the various modal panels. They are really hard to hit/toggle on smaller screens like the iPad Mini or iPhone. Otherwise, great job and we would highly recommend.
Our friends and we play this on PC but started off playing with the real board game, highly recommend.
This app works great on iPad and iPhone. One of the top board games is now much more accessible.
.but quick feedback: 1) is there any chance we can get full screen?? We understand why dire wolf pulls in the extents, but man, it feels cheap. 2) can we get an option to reverse the zoom in direction? Pulling the fingers apart does the opposite of what feels natural on a touchscreen 3) this might sound petty, but devs please listen, the top right corner of every card that is enlarged it has an extra pixel or something hahaha (ie the curve isnt continuous) It looks unfinished.
Overall great implementation but tile placement is maddening on iPad. Rotating and placing often is not recognized and you have to click back and forth several times before you get lucky and hit the right pixel. Once this is fixed the game will be awesome.
Ive played this game quite a bit both in person and on Board Game Arena. Seeing this game on mobile as a dedicated app was such an awesome surprise! So far its been a welcome experience to play the game with a modern design, but we have a few issues. 1. The board state is really difficult to read. This is a game that requires constant attention to different trackers/aspects of the game. On mobile we can not see our zoo ma as default we have to manually bring up the conservation board, zoo cards/reputation/conservation tracker, and our own cards. We cannot view that information simultaneously – which makes it pain to track interactions and break points. We need a larger view for default game state – it is just too much clicking around to have to view basic info we need all the time. At the same time we sympathize for the UX designer tasked with the above ask – its a lot of info to cram into a mobile view, but frankly its not a great experience. 2. When creating games with friends, it seems ridiculous we all need to be on the app at the exact same time That said, have high hopes for this app because we love ark nova and the overall design is clean, modern and enjoyable.
Please fix the building placement UI. Its impossible to rotate and place the buildings. The update didnt help. Game is unplayable until then.
Great game! Need a quicker way to read/zoom on cards.
This is a really nice implementation of the board game. Im impressed how well it plays on our phone.
The game is great but the UI is real bad on an iPhone. There really isn't enough real estate on the phone to have all the info in front of you. You just hear a lot of noises and it's your turn. Then the screens cover each other so you can't see screens that pop up. We had a rewards screen blocked by the cards and nothing made it go away. PC version looks amazing. Would have bought it there. Maybe iPad will be better. Building placement is about aggravating enough to close the app. That needs an instant fix. Maybe double tapto lock the pivot point or something but it's horrible. We know they will fix it but buyer beware. This needed some more time in the oven.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.5
- Size: 644.68 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, JA, KO, ZH, ES, ZH
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Dire Wolf Digital LLC
Last updated: 18th September 2025 | Genre: Strategy, Board | Developer: Dire Wolf Digital LLC