SEVEN HUMANS,
ONE PHOTOCOPIER
BattleRelay is an independent gaming publication based in Te Aro, Wellington. We answer to readers, the Commerce Act, and nobody else.
THE MISSION, UNLAMINATED
We exist because game criticism kept getting smoother and games kept deserving better. Our rules are short: buy our own copies whenever humanly possible, finish the game before scoring it, disclose everything — travel, codes, friendships — and never let a score be negotiated. A publisher once asked if a 6 could "become a 7 closer to launch". That email is framed in our office.
We cover the big releases because you'd rightly ask where they were, but our heart is with the weird stuff: the two-person studios, the demos on page nine of Steam, the NZ scene that keeps punching miles above its population. Roughly a third of everything we publish is about games made by teams smaller than a netball side.
WHY "BATTLERELAY"?
The first issue was compiled overnight by three people passing one working laptop back and forth like a baton — a relay, mid-battle, against a 9am print deadline. The name stuck. The laptop did not; it's buried with honours.
02/ THE CREW actual humans, we checked
AROHA NGATA
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF · REVIEWS
Founder. Ran the original photocopier. Metroidvania completionist, deadline enforcer, biter of pens.
DYLAN WHITFORD
NEWS EDITOR
Reads every press release so you never have to. Owns a rubber stamp that says "PROVE IT" and uses it daily.
SAM PRESCOTT
FEATURES · PUZZLE DESK
Keeps a paper notebook for every puzzle game since 2021. The Blue Prince one has its own spine damage.
JORDAN REEVE
HARDWARE · SHOOTERS
Benchmarks everything twice. Believes frame-time graphs are a love language and motion blur is a crime scene.
KIRI MATTHEWS
ACTION · RPG DESK
Nineteen attempts means nineteen lessons. Has platinumed things the rest of us won't discuss for morale reasons.
TESSA MORAN
CO-OP · COMMUNITY
Runs the letters page and the couch co-op test lab (her actual couch). Split Fiction survivor, twice.
BEN ALDOUS
INDIE DESK
Plays demos on ferries for science. If a game was made by fewer than five people, Ben has already wishlisted it.
Plus regular contributors Lucy Frame (horror, preservation) and Mere Kaipara (NZ scene), who are technically freelance and spiritually furniture.
03/ THE TIMELINE
- 2020
Issue #1: thirty photocopied A5 copies handed out at a Wellington game meetup. Print run sells out (it was free).
- 2021
battlerelay.com goes live after the photocopier jams one final, decisive time. First reader letter arrives; it's a correction. We frame it.
- 2022
Reviews desk formalises the out-of-ten scale and the "finish the game first" rule. Traffic doubles. Coincidence? No.
- 2023
First NZGDC press badges. Kiri platinums something in the taxi there. The indie desk becomes a full-time job.
- 2024
50,000 monthly readers. The letters page gets its own editor because you lot write a LOT.
- 2025
Silksong releases; the office is legally unstaffed for one week. Review #400 published in October.
- 2026
71,500 monthly readers, 468 reviews, zero negotiated scores. The framed email remains framed.
GOT A TIP, A CORRECTION, A GRUDGE?
The letters page is undefeated. Email us or use the form — we read everything, even the ones in all caps. Especially those.
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