About us
Forgecedar — a review desk in Wellington
A small team of writers and testers that has been documenting game portals since 2021, working to a fixed process and publishing the reasoning behind every entry.
Forgecedar started from a simple observation: plenty is written about game portals, but very little of it is checkable. What usually gets compared is promotional copy rather than the platforms themselves. We built a fixed scoring frame instead, and we apply it to every portal in the same way.
The desk works from Wellington for a New Zealand readership. Testing happens on both desktop and mobile, across at least three sessions at different times of day, so that load behaviour under varying demand is part of the picture rather than an afterthought.
Forgecedar runs no games of its own, brokers no accounts and processes no payments. Every outbound link points to an operator's official site, and we take no commission when a reader follows one.
Editorial and commercial stay apart
No entry can be purchased. If a piece were ever commissioned, it would say so in the first paragraph, not in a footnote.
Only what we can support
We publish what we tested ourselves. Third-party claims are attributed, and anything unverified is labelled as unverified.
Corrections in public
Mistakes are fixed on the entry and noted in the text. Readers and operators can both submit corrections.
Measured language
No superlatives and no encouragement to play. We describe platforms; we do not promote them.
Editorial lead
Sets the review queue, signs off every published entry and handles corrections.
Field testers
Two testers per portal, working independently on separate accounts and devices.
Fact-checking
Cross-references every factual claim against the operator's own published pages.
1Shortlist
A portal enters the queue when readers ask about it or when it appears repeatedly in public listings. Operators cannot buy a place in the queue.
2Field testing
Two editors run separate accounts across desktop and mobile, over at least three sessions at different times of day.
3Scoring
Each of the six criteria is scored independently, with written notes. Scores are only merged after both editors have finished.
4Cross-check
Claims made in the write-up are matched against the operator's own published pages. Anything we cannot verify is marked as unverified.
5Review cycle
Entries are revisited on a rolling basis. A significant platform change resets the entry to the field-testing stage.
- 01First session clarity
- How quickly a new visitor understands what the portal offers, and whether the first ten minutes require any outside guidance.
- 02Interface discipline
- Navigation depth, readability at small sizes, and how much of the screen is given to content rather than promotion.
- 03Technical behaviour
- Load times on an average New Zealand connection, stability across sessions, and behaviour on mid-range mobile hardware.
- 04Content depth
- Whether the catalogue holds up beyond the first weeks: variety, update cadence and the presence of long-form progression.
- 05Transparency
- How clearly the operator states its terms, account rules, age limits and what it does with the data it collects.
- 06Support and recourse
- Documented contact routes, published response expectations and the quality of the help material a player can reach unaided.