Mad Fox Games — a review of madfox.dev

An independent mobile studio that also keeps yearly rankings of casual puzzle games. We read the site before writing this, and the review below is our own opinion — nobody paid for it and nobody approved it.

Disclosure. This is a partner review. Mad Fox Games offered to feature our game in their rankings and asked for a review of their site in return, so we wrote one. No money changed hands in either direction, the scores below are ours alone, and they saw this page for the first time when you did.

4.5 out of 5 · reviewed September 10, 2026

Editorial honesty
5.0 / 5

Their own game sits at number one and the entry says so in the first line.

Selection rules
5.0 / 5

Stated up front and unusually strict about ads and pay-to-win.

Depth of the write-ups
4.0 / 5

Each entry explains who the game is for, not just what it is.

Breadth of the catalogue
4.0 / 5

Two years of rankings, an indie section, English and Russian.

Read it for what it is. Mad Fox Games is a studio, not a magazine, so their own titles appear in their lists. They say this plainly rather than hiding it, which is more than many roundups manage — but treat the rankings as a curated list by developers, not the verdict of an independent jury.

What the site is

Mad Fox Games makes mobile games for iOS and Android, and describes its own goal as games with easy onboarding, deep mechanics and no intrusive advertising. Their first 4X strategy, Crownfall, is in open beta on Android. Alongside the games, the site runs a second life as a small editorial project: rankings for 2025 and 2026, a section on indie games, and the whole thing mirrored in English and Russian.

How they pick games

Their puzzle roundup for 2026 opens with the criteria, which is the part most lists skip. A game has to be understandable in thirty seconds, must not force an ad every second move, and must not put a pay-to-win wall in the way. They also say each title was checked on real devices, budget Android phones included. Those are the rules of someone who plays on a commute, not someone filling a page.

The list itself mixes the obvious with the specific — Baba Is You, Monument Valley 2, Blockudoku — and the entries explain who each game suits rather than reciting features. Their own 2048 MadFox takes the top spot, a browser-playable 2048 where the tiles double as a course in personal finance. It opens straight from a link with nothing to install, which is a fair reason to lead with it, and to their credit the entry begins with the words “this is our own game”.

Why we are linking to it

We make Arrow Solitaire: Crosswise, so we are hardly neutral about puzzle games either. What we recognise here is the standard: no forced ads, no paywalls in the middle of a session, playable in a minute or an hour. That is the same line we try to hold in our own game, and a site that judges by it is worth a reader’s time.

Visit madfox.dev →