About the desk

Play Pocket Reviews is a small, independent site about mobile games. We started it for a simple reason: most "best mobile game" lists are stitched together from store blurbs by people who clearly haven't played the games. We wanted somewhere that tells you, plainly, whether a game is worth the space on your phone.

Who writes this

Naomi Okafor covers puzzle, cozy, and social games — anything she can lose a quiet evening to. Diego Salcedo handles action, arcade, and competitive multiplayer, and owns far too many phones for testing performance. Between us we've been playing and writing about handheld games for over a decade.

How we score

Every game gets a single score out of 10, built from four sub-scores we mark separately:

Fun — is the core loop a genuine pleasure, minute to minute?
Depth — is there a real reason to keep coming back?
Value — how fair is the deal, especially for free-to-play players? Aggressive monetisation costs points here.
Polish — does it run well, feel good, and respect your time and battery?

As a rough guide: a 7 is a good game with clear caveats; an 8 or 9 is something we'd recommend without hedging; a 10 we reserve for games that do something nobody else has. We don't do half-points below 5 because, honestly, we rarely finish those games.

Our independence

We buy or download everything ourselves. We accept no payment, gifts, review codes, or sponsorship from developers or publishers, and we run no advertising or affiliate links on this site. Nobody pays for a score. If that ever changes, we'll say so loudly and at the top of the page in question.