How We Decide on a Score

People ask us how a casual game and a sprawling RPG can share the same scale. It's a fair question, and the honest answer is that we judge each game against its own genre, not against each other.

A score of 4.2 for a casual game means it's excellent at being a casual game: tight, fair, respectful of your time. The same number on an RPG means something different because the expectations are different. We're not saying Legends of Slots is better or worse than Emberfall Chronicle; they're not trying to do the same thing.

We also weigh how a game holds up over time, not just the first hour. Plenty of games dazzle early and collapse later. The score reflects the whole experience we actually had, including the dull stretches.

No game is perfect, and you'll notice we rarely hand out the top marks. That's deliberate. A 4.9 should mean something, so we keep it rare.