About us
A back room above a print shop, and five people who cannot agree on anything
Xilarevoku started in February 2026 when three of us realised we had each separately given up on writing about games because the pace of it had become absurd. The fix was to slow down until the writing was worth reading, then work out whether anyone would follow. Nine write-ups later the answer appears to be yes, modestly.
Who is here
Five contributors, four strands, one shared kettle
Nobody here does this full-time and nobody is paid by the site, because the site has no income. Each person holds a strand; the fifth floats and takes whichever slot has fallen through.
Aoife Brennan
Tactics strand. Spent eleven years as a systems analyst before deciding that reading spreadsheets for pleasure was a transferable skill. Lost eleven consecutive campaigns of a logistics game in June and wrote about it rather than quietly deleting the evidence.
Also handles the rotation calendar, which is why it is the only thing here that runs on time.
Dev Raichura
Narrative strand. Came from theatre and still writes as though a piece will be read aloud, which is either the best or worst habit in the room depending on who you ask. Has the strongest opinions about endings and the weakest patience for tutorials.
Argued for two rounds of edits that a bad final hour can undo twelve good ones. Lost, but the argument stayed in the piece.
Marta Kowalczyk
Puzzle strand. Finishes everything, twice where necessary, and refuses to publish on a puzzle game she abandoned. Proposed deleting our scores out of ten in the second month and was immediately proved right.
Keeps the paper notebooks that half the archive's claims are actually based on.
Callum Etherington
Survival strand. Owns the eight-year-old desktop we test the floor on and will not be talked into replacing it. Logs the longest hours in the archive by a wide margin, mostly because the games he covers spend their first ten hours being unremarkable.
Responsible for the accessibility checks reaching the shipped-build standard rather than the press-notes standard.
Priya Sandhu
Floating. Takes whichever strand has fallen through and reads almost every draft as one of the two required readers. Joined in April after sending a letter pointing out three separate errors in a single write-up, which remains the most efficient job application any of us has seen.
Also the reason the corrections log exists in its current public form.
What we all do
Everyone reads two drafts a month that are not their own. Everyone logs their own hours honestly. Everyone has the right to leave a disagreement visible in someone else's piece, and nobody has the right to remove one from their own.
“The whole editorial policy fits on one side of a postcard. If it needed more than that, we would be hiding something in the second paragraph.”
Lending and disclosure
Where the games come from, stated plainly
This is the section most sites bury. Ours sits on the navigation and is linked from the footer of every page, because the answer is not embarrassing and there is no reason to make it hard to find.
| Source | Write-ups | How it is declared |
|---|---|---|
| Bought by the writer | Five | No note needed; this is the default and the absence of a note means this. |
| Lent by the publisher or developer | Three | Stated in the first line of the write-up, before any description of the game. |
| Borrowed from another contributor | One | Stated in the first line, with the lender named. |
| Provided with conditions attached | None | We have declined two offers on these grounds and would decline them again. |
What we accept
A copy of a game, lent or given, with no conditions on timing, tone, or content. That is the entire list.
What we decline
Embargo agreements that specify anything beyond a date. Travel and accommodation. Hardware. Early access in exchange for a preview. Advertising in any form. Affiliate arrangements. Sponsored sections. Anything described to us as a partnership.
How the room is funded
It is not. Rent on the back room is split five ways and comes out of the day jobs that pay for our actual lives. The domain and hosting cost less per year than one of us spends on coffee, which is the only reason this arrangement works.
If that ever changes, it will be stated on this page before it is announced anywhere else, and the funding source will be named.
Nothing here is for sale
There is no shop, no membership tier, no donation link, no marketplace and no price anywhere in our writing. We do not list where to buy a game and we do not link to storefronts.
The room itself
Second floor, and the heating has never worked
Practical details, for anyone who has asked whether this is a real place with real chairs in it.
Hilton Street Works is a converted printing premises in the Northern Quarter, split into small studios. Ours is on the second floor at the back, roughly the size of two parking spaces, with four machines on trestle tables and one window that faces a brick wall two metres away.
The Thursday edit meeting runs from seven until whenever the last disagreement is resolved, which averages around half past nine. Anyone who has sent us a letter that turned into a correction gets invited to one, and three people have taken us up on it.
We are not open to the public and there is nothing to visit — no events, no screenings, no launches. The address is published because a site that writes critically about other people's work should be findable.
