How We Actually Decide a Score

People ask us how a game ends up with, say, a 4.3 instead of a 4.6. It's not a formula, but it's not random either. Here's roughly how our process works.

Every game gets a minimum of several real play sessions across a few days. We want to feel how it holds up after the novelty wears off, because plenty of games are dazzling for an hour and hollow by day three.

We weigh four rough things: how the mechanics feel, how respectfully it treats your time, how well it runs on a normal phone, and whether we actually wanted to keep playing. That last one matters more than people expect.

The number is deliberately subjective, and we say so. Two of us might disagree by half a point, and we hash it out until we land somewhere honest. A score is a shortcut, not a verdict from on high.

If you ever wonder why a game scored the way it did, the review text always explains it. The number is just the door; the reasoning is the room.