NorthFiveFun exists because picking a game on your phone is genuinely worse than it should be. The store's own listings are written by marketing departments, the "top charts" are calculated on install numbers rather than on whether a game is any good, and the endless scroll of free-to-play titles makes it hard to tell the difference between something worth your evening and something designed to cost you an evening plus a data plan.
We built the site we wanted to use: a fast, plain, mobile-first index of Android games with the store's real numbers attached, a short honest read on each one, and no fuss. The tagline is Honest reviews. Better games. and we mean it in the plain sense — we will tell you a game is a slog.
What we cover
The site currently indexes more than 800 Android games, spanning sixteen genres: action, adventure, arcade, board, puzzle, casual, strategy, simulation, card, role-playing, music, educational, word, sports, casino and racing. That range is deliberate. A site that only covers shooters is not useful to most people, and the best games on Android in any given month are often a word game or a board game rather than another battle royale.
How games are selected and ranked
Selection is not a favouritism problem, because we do not accept submissions. Our database is built from Google Play's own public charts and category listings, which are refreshed regularly. That gives us the following sections, and the order inside each one comes straight from the store:
- Top Free — the store's top free chart, in the store's order.
- Top Paid — the store's top paid chart.
- Top Grossing — the store's grossing chart, which is a useful proxy for what is actually making money and therefore what most people are playing.
- Trending — the games moving fastest through those charts this week. This is the most volatile section and the most interesting one.
- High Rated — ordered by the Play Store score. That score is the store's figure, not ours; we simply surface it.
- Newest — the most recently released additions to the index, so you can see what launched this week without digging through search results.
- Free and Paid — a straight price filter, for when you want to spend nothing or would rather spend something once than be nickel-and-dimed.
- Genre pages — one page per genre for every genre with enough titles in it to be worth its own page. Where a category is genuinely thin we do not force a page onto it; those games are reachable through a filter on the full index instead. We would rather have nine useful genre pages than seventeen, eight of which would list two games.
Every game page also carries our own overview, the developer's own store description clearly attributed as such, a screenshots panel, and a set of community reviews. It links back to its genre page and to whichever charts it appears in, so you can always get from a specific game back to the bigger picture.
How we work
We are a small team and we would rather be honest about how the site is made than dress it up.
The factual layer — the game database, the ratings, the pricing, the charts — is pulled from public Google Play listings and refreshed on a rolling schedule. It is accurate as of the last fetch and it will drift, which is why every game page links straight to the store. Always check the listing before you buy.
The editorial layer is where the judgement lives. We write the overviews, the summaries, the genre framing and the critical notes ourselves. Where we repeat a developer's own description, we label it as the store description rather than passing it off as our own writing.
The community review layer is AI-assisted simulated editorial feedback. It is generated by our tooling to represent the reactions a game in its genre typically provokes, anchored to the game's own mechanics and its real store score. It is not collected from real Google Play users, the names are invented, and it is never presented as a genuine player testimonial. We have made a point of labelling this clearly rather than letting it blur, because a site that fakes grassroots enthusiasm is not worth reading. The Editorial Policy sets out the method in full.
What we will not do
- We will not take payment for a rating, a chart position, a review, or a place in a list.
- We will not publish a paid "review" of a game without a visible, unambiguous label saying so.
- We will not copy a developer's marketing copy and present it as our own opinion.
- We will not remove a negative opinion because a company asked us to. If a page is wrong, we correct the page; if it is right, we leave it alone.
- We will not pretend our simulated reviews are real ones.
How the site is funded
By advertising, and by nothing else. There is no subscription, no account, no paywall and no data sale. Ad placements are clearly labelled and kept away from the content, and you can read the Cookie Policy to see exactly what that involves, including how to opt out. If you would like to support the site, the Advertise page explains the options for reaching our readers.
Corrections and feedback
We get things wrong, and store data changes under our feet. If a page is out of date, a link is broken or a rating looks wrong, tell us and we will fix it. If you disagree with a verdict, we will happily hear the argument — though we may keep the verdict, because that is what an opinion is for.
NorthFiveFun is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google LLC. Game names, logos and artwork belong to their respective developers and publishers, and we use them for editorial purposes with attribution and a link to the official listing.
Get in touch
Every message goes to the same small mailbox, and a real person reads it: support@gameguide002.northfivefun.com. The Contact page explains what to include so we can actually help. We would genuinely rather hear from you than not.