How we test whether a game really works offline

Plenty of games claim to work offline and then stall the moment you lose signal. So before we rate anything, we put the phone into airplane mode and try to play from the first launch to a real save point.

We check a few things: does it launch cold without a connection, does progress save locally, and does it ever block you with a 'reconnect' wall. If any of those fail, the offline tag comes off.

We also watch for ads that need the internet, because a game that pauses to load an ad it can't reach is basically broken on a plane. Honest offline games either skip those or queue them for later.

It's not glamorous, but it's the whole reason this site exists. We'd rather tell you a game breaks offline than let you find out mid-flight.