How we test the games we review

People ask how we score games, so here's the honest version. There's no lab and no fancy rig. There's a group of us, our phones, and a shared notes document that gets messy fast.

Every game gets a minimum of a few real play sessions across different situations — a commute, an evening on the couch, a bit of airplane mode testing. If it can't survive our lives, it won't survive yours.

We note the small annoyances as we go: a confusing menu, a session that won't resume, a battery that drops too fast. Those details usually matter more than the headline features.

Ratings are a discussion, not a formula. Someone makes a case, someone pushes back, and we land on a number we can all defend. If we disagree strongly, that shows up in the review too.

We revisit games sometimes after updates, especially if a reader flags a big change. The score you see reflects the version we played, and we try to say when that was.