How we actually decide a rating

People ask what a 4.3 means versus a 4.6, so here's the honest answer. We don't have a magic formula, but we do have a shared checklist and a lot of arguing.

Every game gets played across several sessions on different days, ideally on more than one phone. We look at controls, pacing, how it respects your time, how it runs on older hardware, and whether we actually wanted to open it again.

A score isn't a percentage of quality, it's a recommendation strength. A 4.0 is 'worth your time if the genre appeals to you.' A 4.7 is 'install this now.' Anything we'd actively steer people away from usually doesn't get a page at all.

We also revisit scores. Games get updates, and a rough launch sometimes becomes a great game three patches later. When that happens we change the number and say why.