Once upon a time, in a living room not so far away, we were rating board games by vibes alone. “That felt like a 7, right?” “Eh, maybe an 8?” It was chaotic, inconsistent, and let’s be honest, silly! We bounced from a 5-point scale to a 10-point scale without a second thought. To us, anything 4 or less was not worth keeping, a 5 meant someone at some point in time might like this, a 6 was fine but probably fiddly, whereas a 7 or higher was safe from the next collection purge.
But eventually we realized, how do you compare a silly party card game to a four-hour strategic experience with 17 types of tokens and personal glossaries? You don’t. Or at least, not without a better system.
So we made one. Enter spreadsheets, category legends, weighted averages, and pie charts!
The Bones of Our Rating System
We rate every game across nine categories, each scored from 1 to 10. Each number corresponds to a carefully written legend that we (are supposed to) reference every time we rate. We do this so that a “6” in “Replayability” means the same sort of thing every time.
Categories include:
- Theme or Abstractness,
- Components, Artwork, and Production Quality,
- Learning Curve, Rulebook Quality, and Teachability,
- Gameplay and Mechanics,
- Player Interaction,
- Replayability,
- Game Length and Downtime,
- Fun Factor, and
- Accessibility, Inclusivity, and Scaling
Each score is multiplied by a weight, a number that reflects how important that category is to each of us.
The Legend
If you really care, we’ve laid out what we think makes a game a 1, 2, 3, and so on. Otherwise, feel free to skip ahead to the good stuff.
Weighting It Our Way
You see, we don’t value the same things equally when it comes to games, and we wanted to create a system that reflected that.
Duncan wants a game to be fun, replayable, and have solid mechanics.
Corinna cares too much about everything; whether a game scales well, how it teaches, and how it feels in hand…
So, we made formulas that reflect what each of us cares about most. Here’s the breakdown of how much weight we each assign to every category.
Duncan’s pie is fun-heavy, but replayability, game length, and gameplay are big pieces too.
Corinna’s pie is still very fun-heavy, but a bit more nuanced when considering all the other categories.
In plain English, each category is graded out of 10, multiplied by its weight, added up, and divided by the total possible score (for Duncan, 10, Corinna, 16.8), to give us a final “average score.”
Math In Action
Let’s walk through how our rating system works using a series of screenshots from Corinna’s spreadsheet while rating Carcassonne (just so you can see the process in action):
Wait… So, What’s A Good Score?
Now that the numbers are more than just gut feelings, here’s how we interpret them:
- 4 or lower: Bye! Not for us.
- 5: It’s fine. Might stay on our shelf for someone else.
- 6: Good-ish. Someone out there will enjoy it, we’re just not them.
- 7: Solid. This is our most common rating. Definitely shelf-worthy.
- 8: Very good. Could make our Top 100.
- 9: One of our personal favourites.
- 10: Perfection. We tell everyone about it.
The Takeaway
Our system isn’t perfect, but it’s personalized, thoughtful, and helps us stay consistent. More importantly, it helps us talk clearly about why we loved (or didn’t love) a game. Plus, it’s kind of fun to nerd out with graphs and scores before making space on the shelf or writing a review.
And even though it may sound complicated, the spreadsheet in action is very user-friendly! If you’re curious about more logistics of how the spreadsheet works or want to try adapting the method for your ratings, shoot us a message! We love seeing how others weigh what matters most in a game.
We only started rating our collection in late 2024, so there are still a bunch of games unrated, but you can check out the breakdowns right here if you’re curious!
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