How we actually test a game before reviewing it

People sometimes assume game reviews are written off a quick play and a press release. Maybe some are. Ours aren't, and I want to explain the process because it affects what our scores actually mean.

When a game lands on our list, one editor takes point and plays it for at least several days across different situations — at home, on the move, tired, distracted. A game that's great in a quiet room but useless on a bumpy bus is a different beast, and that context matters.

We also drain the battery on purpose to see how the game holds up when the phone gets warm, and we play on an older device as well as a newer one. Plenty of indie games run beautifully on flagship hardware and stutter badly two years back. Readers deserve to know that.

Only after all that does the editor draft a review, and then Katarína tears into it with questions. If the writer can't back up a claim, it gets cut. The number at the top comes last, once everything else is settled.

It's slower than churning out quick takes. But it's the only way I know to write something I'd actually trust if I were the one reading it.