How We Decide What A Game Is Worth

People sometimes ask how we land on a number. The honest answer is that the rating comes last, after the playing and the writing. We never start with a score and justify it.

First, someone lives with the game for a few days. They take notes on what's frustrating, what's fun, and what they keep thinking about when they're not playing. That last one matters more than you'd think.

Then we talk it through as a group. If two of us loved it and one bounced off it hard, that disagreement usually points at something worth mentioning in the review. We'd rather show the tension than average it away.

The rating is a rough shorthand, nothing more. A 4.2 and a 4.4 aren't meaningfully different, so we care much more about the words around the number. Read those.

We also revisit games sometimes. A big update can change how something plays, and we'd rather adjust than leave an outdated take sitting there forever.