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.

In order to review games in as timely a fashion as possible, we may accept game samples from publishers, back crowdfunding campaigns or purchase products directly at retail. Where possible, we will make clear how a game was acquired, the edition reviewed and who provided it. We will not request samples or products from companies beyond what is required for accurate and fair coverage of the game and edition concerned. Reviews will never be sponsored by publishers or published in exchange for any kind of financial compensation or similar. Dicebreaker cannot guarantee any coverage of any specific game provided by a publisher.

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.

Dicebreaker's reviews currently do not have a review score assigned. This is to allow the author to express their opinion about a game in nuanced terms and avoid a simplification of their experience with a game to a numerical score. We would encourage readers to read a review in full to fully appreciate the author's feelings about their time with a game.

We may occasionally review things that aren't games, but that we believe to be relevant and of interest to Dicebreaker's audience, including (but not limited to) films, video games, books and other tabletop-related products or experiences. The decision of what we review is made by the Editor-in-Chief alongside the Dicebreaker team and, where possible, will continue to abide by all of the guidelines outlined in this Review Policy.

After a review and any other related coverage has been published, we may donate games and other samples that are no longer needed to charities, schools, libraries and other charitable or non-profit organisations, both local and national. Those recipients may vary, but will be decided by the Dicebreaker team in keeping with our support for certain causes. We will not resell any samples provided by publishers or exchange complimentary products for money or similar.