How we actually arrive at a score

People sometimes ask whether our numbers mean anything or if we just pick a vibe. Fair question, so here's the honest version.

A score reflects how a game held up across real play on a real phone. We weigh how the controls feel, how fair the difficulty is, and whether the thing respects your time and your battery. A gorgeous game that melts your phone in twenty minutes won't score as well as a plain one that just works.

We don't compare across genres with a single ruler. A cozy sim and a twitchy racer are judged against what they're trying to be, not against each other. A high score means 'this does its job well', not 'this is better than everything else'.

And the score can move. If an update fixes a nagging problem or breaks something, we go back and adjust the review rather than leave old impressions standing.