At Use a Potion, we write reviews because we love games… it’s as simple as that.
We’re not full-time journalists or professional critics – we’re a small team of real-life friends who just enjoy sharing our thoughts on the games we play. Everyone here does this part-time, for fun, and because we genuinely care about the hobby. It’s brought us all together in a really cool way as we’ve gotten older, all whilst allowing us to share our opinions with a wider community of gaming. We’ve been doing this for over ten years now and we’re not planning on stopping anytime soon.
Our goal is to help you figure out what’s worth playing, all without spoiling the good stuff or pretending to be something we’re not.
How we Review
We play the games we write about for as long as we think is required to give our definitive thoughts on them. That means spending proper time with them, learning their systems, testing their quirks, and seeing what works and what doesn’t. There might be times when we won’t finish a game before reviewing it (typically with massive RPGs), but we can promise you that we’d have played more than enough to give a trustworthy opinion.
Whenever possible, we match each review to the right person for the game. If someone loves RPGs, they’ll handle the RPGs. If another person lives for platformers, that’s where they’ll focus. It just makes sense, and sure, that might mean some reviews can lean a bit more positive, but we’d rather be glass half full about games than go out of our way to tear something down. We’ll always be honest though, and if there are flaws or issues in a game, we’ll call them out.
Avoiding Spoilers
We do our best to keep reviews spoiler-free.
We’ll talk about gameplay, structure, and performance, but we’ll never spoil key story moments, major surprises, or even some cool gameplay mechanics that just don’t need to be detailed.
Some of the best parts of gaming are discovering those moments for yourself, and we’d rather not ruin that for anyone. We know we’ve read reviews where we’ve been left thinking, ‘I wish I discovered that myself’, so it’s important to us that our readers don’t feel that way.
How Do We Score?
We use a 10-point scale to give you a quick sense of how we felt about a game:
9s and 10s mean something truly special – games that leave a strong impression and remind us why we love playing.
7s and 8s are solid, enjoyable experiences that might not be perfect but are easy to recommend.
6s usually didn’t quite land, even if there’s potential or flashes of something great.
5s and below are games that struggle to deliver a consistent or enjoyable experience – they might have ideas we appreciate, but they just don’t come together in the end.
The score’s there as a quick guide, but the real story is in the review itself.
No Bribes, No Bias
We don’t take money, gifts, or special treatment in exchange for positive reviews, and whilst we do have the occasional goodie sent our way, it’ll never skew our opinion. The vast majority of the games reviewed on this site have been provided to us with review keys from PR teams and publishers, but we never let this influence our reviews.
If anyone on the team has a personal connection to a developer or publisher, they won’t review that game.
Everything we write comes from honesty, experience, and respect for our readers – not from outside influence.
Contact
If you’ve got questions, feedback, or just want to share your own thoughts on a game, reach out at through our site’s contact form. If you want to reach out for a sponsored post… don’t bother, we’re not interested.
We do this part-time, but we try to read every message when we can.
In Short
We’re a small group of game lovers sharing our honest takes – for fun, not fame.
We play what we enjoy, review with fairness, and focus on what makes gaming great.
That’s Use a Potion: positive, honest, and proudly casual.
