How scores work

The six criteria

Every rating is a set of six verbal scores. Words keep the score grounded in what actually happens at the table.

Personal weighting

When you answer the six onboarding questions, Kritiku learns which criteria you care about and what your ideal looks like. A player who values depth gets a higher score for a deep game; a player who hates luck gets a lower score for a swingy one. The model keeps a minimum share for every criterion so no single question can swallow the whole budget.

Your score vs. the Kritiku score

Confidence levels

Next to every Kritiku rating you will find a small three-dot badge showing how much evidence sits behind the score. It is based purely on how many ratings a game has:

• Earlyfewer than 10 ratings
• Building10 to 49 ratings
• Solid50 ratings or more

Personal ratings feeds do not show the badge — it only applies to community scores, where the number of ratings matters.

Reach tiers

Each game is placed in a popularity tier based on how widely it is known. The tiers are: 1 — Widely known, 2 — Well known, 3 — Known, 4 — Niche, 5 — Under the radar. A tier is seeded when a game enters the library and is then re-derived from Kritiku's own activity, so it never depends on a live external ranking. Expansions inherit their base game's reach, so a great expansion is not punished for being a smaller release.

Hidden gems

A game earns the Hidden Gem badge when three things line up: it is loved by Kritiku raters (Kritiku rating of 7.5 or higher), it has enough ratings to be trusted, and it is still overlooked (Reach tier 3 or higher). The ratings bar is not a fixed number — it tracks the median number of ratings per rated game, so it rises as the library fills up, always staying between 5 and 50 ratings. Hidden gems are a base-game signal only: expansions inherit their base game's reach, so they are never badged.

Trending this week

The Trending list looks at momentum rather than all-time totals. It compares a game's activity over the last seven days — new ratings and shelf adds — against the seven days before that, and labels each entry accordingly: a percentage rise, Steady, or New when the game had no activity in the earlier window.

Mechanics you love and avoid

Your profile lets you flag mechanics you love and mechanics you avoid. These preferences feed the recommendation engine, but they do not change your score for a game. They help Kritiku find titles you are more likely to enjoy and warn you before a game built around a mechanic you dislike hits your table.

Recommendations

The Games to try list picks candidates across the popularity tiers, then scores each one against your personal weights, the mechanics you love and avoid, and the player counts and session lengths you told us about. Games already on your shelf but not yet rated get a nudge, as do overlooked titles and hidden gems, while famous games are capped so they cannot fill the whole list. Every suggestion comes with a short explanation of why it fits your profile. A new shuffle is generated each day, so you can return and find fresh ideas without losing the previous day's picks.

Your shelf

You can mark any game as Owned, Played, or On your Wishlist. These labels are personal only and do not change Kritiku scores. They help you keep track of your collection and make it easier to filter your library when you want to revisit something.

Series & base games

Some games are part of a family. On a game page, you can choose whether the rating applies to the base game alone or to the whole series. The series view combines base and expansion ratings while still showing the split, so you can see how the whole experience is rated without hiding the individual parts.

Game discussions

Every game page has a Discussion tab next to the rating CTA. Inside you can start or join threads about the game, sorted into four categories: Reviews, General, Strategy, and Questions. Posts are public to read, but only signed-in users can start threads or reply. Threads support simple formatting — bold, italic, and bullet lists — and both threads and replies are paginated so long conversations stay easy to follow.

Weight bands

Kritiku computes a complexity band from the community's own Complexity ratings, so the label reflects how players actually experience the game. Game pages show the label only — the underlying average sits behind these thresholds:

• Lightup to 1.7
• Medium lightup to 2.5
• Mediumup to 3.4
• Medium heavyup to 4.2
• Heavyup to 5.0

Radar charts

The radar chart is a fingerprint of a game. Each axis is one criterion. On game pages you can see your own shape alongside the Kritiku average, making it easy to spot where your taste diverges from the community.