How we land on a rating

People ask why we rarely give a game a perfect score. The short answer is that a phone game has to earn it across time, not just impress us once.

Our ratings weigh a few things: how the game feels to control, how respectful it is of your attention, how it holds up after several sessions, and whether it's fair with progression. A gorgeous game that begs you to keep tapping every ten minutes loses points fast.

We also try to score within genre. A casual runner and a deep strategy game aren't judged on the same scale, because they're trying to do very different things.

Numbers are useful shorthand, but the words matter more. Read the review, not just the rating — that's where we tell you whether a game is right for you specifically.