Our bench, our rules (there are only five)

— the page where we explain ourselves —

A cosy Melbourne reading nook with two armchairs, tea, phones showing puzzle games, and a small jester figurine on the windowsill

Who is actually writing this

Rosie is a primary school librarian who has beaten every word puzzle she has ever met and holds grudges against exactly two of them. She handles our word games, tile games and anything with a daily streak, and she is the reason this blog has opinions about typography in games.

Tom is a tram mechanic with the steadiest thumbs in the Inner North. Arcade games, climbers, anything requiring reflexes or the patience to attempt a summit twice — that's his half of the bench. He also makes the tea, because Rosie makes it wrong, and she agrees this sentence may stay.

We're two friends who noticed that our favourite little games — the free ones, the gentle ones, the ones with a joker or a jester tucked somewhere in the deck — never got written about anywhere except app store blurbs. So in 2023 we started writing about them ourselves, from a shared flat in Melbourne, at the speed of roughly one long post whenever the kettle allows.

The five promises

1. We play properly. Both of us, for at least a week of evenings, before a word gets written. If a game takes a month to show its true face, the review takes a month.

2. Free means free. We only review games you can play in full without paying anything or being nagged to. If that changes after we publish, we say so at the top of the post, with the date.

3. Nobody pays for a teacup. No developer has ever bought a rating here, and none ever will. We don't run sponsorships, we don't do "partnerships", and we buy our own biscuits.

4. We're honest, not cruel. When a game earns two teacups, we explain why like the developer is sitting on the bench with us — because one day they might be.

5. Updates get revisits. Games change. When one we've reviewed changes meaningfully, we go back, replay, and append a dated bench note rather than quietly rewriting history.

Why joker games, specifically?

Because the wild card is the friendliest idea in all of game design. It's the rule that says: here is one thing that can be anything. Every game we love builds a different kind of mischief on top of that promise — a tile that wanders, a card that lies, a twelfth juggling ball that rewrites gravity. Following one idea across dozens of games turns out to be a surprisingly deep hobby, and the bench has room for you too.

If you'd like to point us at a game, argue about a teacup, or just say hello, the letterbox is over here.