Review Policy

Dicebreaker publishes regular reviews of board games, tabletop RPGs, card games and other types of tabletop games. These reviews can be text or video, written by the Dicebreaker team or contributors, and appear on our website and YouTube channel respectively.

Our reviews are written to deliver criticism, analysis and information to help inform you of the writer’s professional opinion about a game. These reviews are subjective; although the content of reviews is discussed with the Editor-in-Chief before publication, the final judgement remains the author’s own.

Games and other products are selected for review on the basis of their relevance and interest to the Dicebreaker audience; quality; notability or content.

Reviewers may be assigned to games based on their professional knowledge of the gameplay concepts and themes, familiarity with other games in the series or similar titles, and other factors that we believe make them the most suitable and capable person to evaluate the game. If a reviewer backed a game on Kickstarter, this will be clearly disclosed in the review.

Reviewers are expected to spend enough time with each game to be able to give a considered opinion based on their comprehensive knowledge of the game. Due to the vast number of ways in which games can differ, this is not a pre-defined number of plays or hours of playing. In the case of games featuring a defined campaign or story, such as legacy games, the game will be played to completion by the reviewer.

Every effort will be made to play a game across its full player count and in every possible variation. When relevant, the review will note the general context in which the game was played in terms of player count and other potential variations due to optional rules, edition-specific changes, expansion material and other variables.

We will only review games that have reached a final stage of production and are available for our audience to buy at the time the review is published. As such, we will not review prototype or pre-production versions of a game. Every effort will be made to review a retail edition of the game; when a different edition, such as a Kickstarter edition, is reviewed we will attempt to clarify any notable differences to the most widely-available version of the game.

We will attempt to publish a review of a game as close as possible to its release date. However, we may delay publication of a review in order to ensure the author has spent enough time with a game to produce a fully comprehensive, accurate and definitive review.

Reviews will be based first and foremost on the experience “out of the box”; rules errata, replacement components, expansions and other additional physical or digital material available for the game before or after release may be taken into account by the reviewer depending on the context, but this is not assumed nor required.

The Dicebreaker Must-Play badge

The Dicebreaker Must-Play badge is awarded to any game that the reviewer feels represents an outstanding tabletop experience. It is Dicebreaker’s highest and only award, and reflects a game that the author believes offers an experience that is top of its class in terms of mechanical achievement, thematic immersion, visual presentation and player engagement. Although no game is for everyone, Dicebreaker’s Must-Play award represents a game that we feel that fans of a particular mechanic, theme, genre or series would be happy to add to their collection.

The decision to award a game with the Must-Play badge is taken by the author of the review and is discussed with the Editor-in-Chief prior to publication. In some instances, the Editor-in-Chief may decide to change whether a game is awarded with the badge, but this change is only made after discussion and agreement with the reviewer.

The publisher or creator of a game awarded with the Dicebreaker Must-Play badge will be informed once the review has been finalised. They will not be provided with any further details of the review’s content before publication.