Apple / medical / VIDEO GAME ADDICTION TEST
REVIEW
Video Game Addiction Test is a mirror, not a diagnosis.
A short self-assessment app that hands you a number and a category. What you do with that number is the whole question.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
Video Game Addiction Test
INQUIRY HEALTH LLC
OUR SCORE
6.2
APPLE
★ 5.0
PRICE
Free
Self-assessment apps occupy an awkward shelf. They aren’t medical devices, they aren’t toys, and the gap between those two is where most of them quietly fail. Video Game Addiction Test sits on that shelf with a single virtue: it knows which shelf it’s on.
The app runs a short structured questionnaire, hands you a number, and labels the number. There’s no AI coach, no streak gamification, no nudge to upgrade. The WHO classified gaming disorder in ICD-11 back in 2018, which means there is now a real clinical category behind questions like these — and also a real risk in conflating a free app’s score with a clinical answer. The best thing this app does is refuse to pretend it’s bridging that gap.
What it could do better is show its work. Cite the instrument. Link out at the high-risk end. The skeleton here is sound; the missing pieces are the ones that would make a curious user trust the result enough to act on it.
The app does one small thing — count your answers and hand back a label. The honesty is in admitting that's all it does.
FEATURES
The app runs a short questionnaire — yes/no and frequency questions about how often gaming pushes out sleep, work, school, meals, or relationships. You tap through, it tallies a score, and you land on a band ranging from "no concern" to "consider seeking help."
There's a results screen with a short written interpretation and, on recent versions, a follow-up reminder so you can retake the test in a few weeks and compare. No account, no cloud sync, no social share. The whole loop takes under five minutes.
It runs offline, asks for no permissions beyond local notifications for the reminder, and stores nothing you can't delete by reinstalling. The screening framing mirrors the structure of widely cited gaming-disorder scales without claiming to be any specific one.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The app is honest about what it isn't. The results screen says — in plain language — that the score is informational, that it isn't a diagnosis, and that anyone worried about their gaming should talk to a professional. That disclaimer matters: the WHO added gaming disorder to ICD-11 in 2018, and the gap between "I play a lot" and "this is a clinical condition" is exactly where a self-assessment app can either help or do harm.
The interaction model is also right-sized. Five minutes, no sign-up, no dark patterns trying to convert your anxiety into a subscription. The reminder for a retest is the one piece of stickiness, and it's the useful kind.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The methodology is opaque. The app doesn't cite which screening instrument it's adapted from — IGDS9-SF, GAS-7, something custom — and that's the single piece of information that would let a curious user check the science. A one-screen "about this test" with citations would close the gap immediately.
There's no resource hand-off at the high-risk end. Land on a "consider seeking help" result and you get the result, not a list of helplines, therapist directories, or evidence-based programs. For an app whose entire output is a risk label, that's the missing second half.
CONCLUSION
Install it if you've been quietly wondering about your own gaming hours and want a structured five minutes to think about it. Don't install it if you're looking for a clinical screen — that's a conversation for a GP or a psychologist, not a free App Store download. The score is a mirror, useful for what mirrors are useful for.