How we actually review a game

People sometimes ask how long we play before writing. The honest answer: until we have a real opinion. For a short casual app that might be a few sessions; for an RPG it could be a dozen hours.

We always play on a real phone, usually a mid-range one, because that's what most readers have. A game that only runs well on a flagship isn't the same game for everybody, and we want our notes to match your experience.

Ratings are deliberately subjective. A '4.5' from us means we genuinely enjoyed it and would tell a friend, not that it scored well on some spreadsheet. We'd rather be honest than pretend to be objective.

And if a game bores us, we say so or we skip it. Nobody is paying us to be nice, which is the whole point of the site.