What Happens Before A Review Goes Up

People sometimes assume review scores appear out of thin air. Here's the boring, honest version of how ours happen.

First, someone claims a game. That person installs it and plays for real — not a demo poke, but enough hours to see how it behaves once the tutorial charm wears off. We take rough notes as we go, mostly little frustrations and surprises.

Then we argue. Seriously, most scores get debated because one of us loved something the other found tedious. That back-and-forth is where the nuance in a review comes from.

Only after all that does anyone write. And if a big update changes a game meaningfully, we go back and revisit rather than leaving an outdated score sitting there forever.