How we test the games we review

We get asked how the reviews here come together, so here's the honest version. It's less glamorous than it sounds and involves a lot of playing on a slightly cracked phone.

Every game gets at least a few days of real play, usually across different situations — at home, on the move, with a weak connection. We're checking whether the fun holds up outside a quiet couch session, because that's where most of us actually play.

We keep notes as we go: what clicked, what frustrated us, when the ads got pushy, how the battery held. Those notes become the review. If two of us play the same game, we compare and argue until we agree on where it lands.

The score comes last, and it's deliberately loose. A 4.4 and a 4.6 aren't a science, they're a feeling backed by hours of play. Read the text; the number is just shorthand.

Nobody pays us to bump a rating, and no publisher sees the review before you do. That's the whole point of doing this ourselves.