How a verdict is made

Every game on this site was played for at least three weeks by two of us, on ordinary accounts we made ourselves, before anything was written. This page is the whole process.

The bands

We sort games by what they ask of an evening, not by genre. Ten minutes means a visit fits a kettle and a missed day costs nothing. Part of an evening means twenty minutes or so, usually twice a day, with something always finishing soon. A standing appointment means the game expects you at roughly the same times each day for the length of a round. None of the bands is better; they are for different weeks.

The four criteria

Time 35%

Does the game respect a working week? Can you miss a day? Are timers set for the player or for the shop?

Fairness 30%

What can money buy, and how loudly is it offered? We score the experience of a player who never pays, and we say where the paying players are.

Depth 20%

Are there real decisions after week two? Does the game reward thought or only attendance?

Polish 15%

Interface, stability, readability on a laptop and a phone, and whether the game explains itself.

The number

Each of us scores the four criteria out of ten. We compare, argue where we differ by more than a point, and average. The verdict is the weighted average. Anything that lands under 7.0 is not published; we would rather have five reviews we stand behind than twenty you have to read between the lines of.

The minutes-per-day figure

We keep a simple log of when we opened a game and when we closed it. The figure on the home page is the median day across three weeks, rounded, for keeping up comfortably rather than competing for the top of a table.

Money

Buttons that open a game are affiliate links and may pay us a commission if you sign up. The verdicts are finished and the text is locked before any link is added, and no publisher sees a review before you do. We bought nothing in any game with money that was not our own.