About CruxJoy
CruxJoy is an independent review site covering free match-3 and puzzle-sort games on Google Play. It's written and maintained by one person — Nadia Boyko, based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador — rather than an editorial team, a studio, or a company. That's worth saying plainly up front, because it shapes everything else about how this site works.
Why just two genres
The games catalogue here is deliberately narrow: eight games split across two hubs, Match-3 Puzzle and Puzzle Sort. That's not a starting point we plan to leave behind quickly — it's a choice about depth over breadth. Covering two genres properly, with a real playthrough behind every review, takes more time than it sounds like, and a one-person site can only stretch so far before the reviews stop being honest and start being guesses.
If the catalogue grows, it will grow the same way it started: one game, played through properly, written up on its own terms.
How a review gets written
Every review on CruxJoy starts with actually playing the game — usually the first hour or so, sometimes longer if a game's difficulty curve or content depth calls for it. Screenshots used on each review page are taken from the game's own official Google Play listing, matched to what we actually saw in play, not stock art or unrelated promotional material.
From there, each review is written from scratch rather than filled into a template. That's also why you'll notice the sections in one review don't always match the sections in another — a game with an unusual board shape gets a section about that; a game with a locked-slot economy gets a section about that instead. The structure follows what's actually worth saying about each game.
What the CruxJoy Pick score means
Alongside Google Play's own star rating (shown exactly as published, when a game has one), every review carries a separate CruxJoy Pick score — a one-to-five editorial call based on how the game actually played for us. It is not an average of other reviews, not pulled from an algorithm, and not the same number as Google Play's rating. It's one person's judgment, clearly labelled as such.
What this site doesn't do
CruxJoy doesn't accept games for review in exchange for payment, doesn't run advertising on the site, and isn't affiliated with Google, Google Play, or any of the developers whose games are covered here. There's no comment section, no user account system, and no data collected through the site itself beyond what's disclosed on the Privacy Notice page.