How we actually test the games we review

People sometimes ask how long we spend with a game before writing about it. The honest answer is: as long as it takes to form a real opinion, which varies a lot.

For an arcade game like Volcane Spins, that might mean a couple of focused evenings until we've seen the later stages and understand how the difficulty curve really feels. For an RPG, it can stretch to weeks.

We always test across more than one device. A game that sings on a new phone can stutter badly on something two or three years old, and most people aren't playing on the latest hardware. So we check both.

We also try to play the way a normal person would — in short bursts, with interruptions, on the move. A game that only works when you can give it your undivided attention isn't really a good mobile game, no matter how polished it is.

Only after all that do we sit down to write. The review you read is the result of real sessions, not a skim of the store page.