What Makes Touch Controls Feel Right

Good touch controls are mostly invisible. You don't notice them because they never get in the way. Bad ones are all you notice — buttons too small, drag zones in the wrong place, a virtual stick that drifts.

The best mobile games design around one thumb. If I have to two-hand something to survive, it had better be a game I planned to sit down with, not one I grabbed at a bus stop.

Customization is underrated. A game that lets you resize and reposition buttons respects that phones come in wildly different sizes. We always test with both a small and a large device for this reason.

When we praise a game for controls, this is what we mean: no fighting the screen, no accidental taps, and menus you can reach without gymnastics.