How we actually score games

People ask what our numbers mean, so here's the honest answer: they're one person's gut feeling after real play, calibrated against everything else that person has reviewed.

We don't score on day one. A game can feel great in the first hour and fall apart in the fifth, so we wait. A puzzle game like Clockwork Cascade only revealed its best ideas around level forty, long after the launch window.

We also test on two phones, because a 4.5 experience on a flagship can be a 3.5 experience on a three-year-old device. Performance is part of the verdict, not a footnote.

So if a score looks a little lower or higher than the hype suggests, that's probably on purpose. The number is ours, earned over a week, not borrowed from a press release.