How We Actually Decide on a Rating

People ask what our numbers mean, so here's the honest answer: they mean what one of us felt after playing a lot of the game. No spreadsheet, no weighted categories pretending to be objective.

We do agree on rough anchors. A 4.9 is something we'd nag friends to install. A 3.8 is playable but flawed enough that we'd hesitate. Anything we couldn't recommend at all usually just doesn't get a review.

What pushes a score up is longevity. Does the game still feel good in week two? Plenty of titles dazzle for an hour and then reveal they're hollow. Those get marked down no matter how slick they look.

Controls and readability matter enormously on phones. A brilliant strategy game with a cramped, confusing interface will always lose points here, because you play it with your thumbs on a small screen, not a mouse.

So take the numbers as a starting point and read the words around them. That's where the real opinion lives.