How we actually test the games we review

People ask how long we spend with a game before writing about it, so here's the honest answer: it depends on the genre, but always long enough to have a real opinion.

For a quick puzzle game, that might be a few solid sessions across a couple of days — enough to see how the difficulty scales and whether it stays fun. For an RPG or strategy game, it's usually a week or more, because those reveal their problems slowly.

We take notes as we play — what annoyed us, what surprised us, what we'd tell a friend. Those notes become the review. We also try to play the way a normal person would, not min-maxing everything, so the impressions match your experience.

And if a game bores us or falls apart, we don't just skip it — sometimes we write about why. A negative note is still useful information. The whole point is to save you the download if it isn't worth it.