Survey: reading the listing first
Every review starts with the CrazyGames page rather than the game. We copy down what the listing promises: the studio, the engine, the controls, the devices it is flagged for and the features it describes. That becomes the brief we hold the game to.
If the listing says thousands of levels, we report thousands of levels and nothing more. We never invent a feature count, a mode or a release date that the page itself does not state.
Dimensioning: six tolerances, one weighted mark
Each game is read against six tolerances on a scale of zero to ten, in half-point steps. The weighted average becomes the mark on its card. Readings are rounded to one decimal place and published in full, so you can disagree with a single number rather than the whole verdict.
| Tolerance | Weight | What we check |
|---|---|---|
| Readable loop | 25 | Within the first sixty seconds, can a newcomer tell what the game wants from them without wading through a wall of tutorial cards? |
| Screen and input fit | 20 | How well the game suits the screen and the hand you actually have, checked against what its CrazyGames page declares. |
| Pacing | 20 | Whether a short sitting still feels complete, or whether progress leans on waiting around for numbers to climb. |
| Clean exit | 15 | How gracefully the game lets you put it down halfway through: little lost, nothing nagging you to stay. |
| Finish and sound | 10 | Art, animation and audio that still feel pleasant after twenty minutes rather than only in the trailer. |
| Listing candour | 10 | How closely the description on the game’s page matches the thing that loads when you press play. |
Benches and browsers
- Bench 1
- A 14-inch Windows laptop running current Chrome and Edge, with a basic two-button mouse.
- Bench 2
- A MacBook Air on Safari and Firefox, used with the trackpad only.
- Bench 3
- A mid-range Android phone in Chrome, tested in portrait and landscape.
- Bench 4
- An iPhone on Safari, checked only for games the listing flags as iPhone-friendly.
- Bench 5
- An Android tablet with a ten-inch screen plus a school-issue Chromebook, both on the office Wi-Fi.
Games flagged as unsuitable for a device are still opened on it once, so we can tell you what goes wrong, but they are not marked down twice for the same limitation.
Checking and sign-off
Lachlan drafts each card and proposes the readings. Odette then plays the game cold, without reading his notes, and records her own. Where the two sets differ by more than a point, we play again together until we can explain the gap in a sentence.
Ravi signs off the factual lines last: controls, device flags and studio names are re-read against the live listing on the day the revision is issued.
When a sheet is revised
- A listing changes its name, controls or device flags.
- An update alters the loop enough that a reading no longer holds.
- A reader sends an RFI that we can reproduce on our benches.
- Three months pass without a revision, which triggers a full re-read regardless.
Every revision is logged with a letter and a date in the table on the cover sheet, alongside a plain description of what moved.
What never earns a reading
- Payment, gifts or early access from a studio or platform.
- Referral arrangements on outbound links, which are kept apart from the tolerance table.
- Hype in trailers or store blurbs that the game itself does not back up.
- Anything built around stakes, real-money play or cash-out mechanics, which falls outside our scope altogether.