The small studios that actually figured out touch controls

Most of the time, a mobile game lives or dies on its controls, and most of the time the controls are the first thing that gets ignored. I've dropped more games over a laggy virtual stick than over bad art or thin story.

The good ones share a few habits. They give you big, forgiving touch targets. They snap to sensible choices instead of punishing a slightly off tap. And they let you play with one hand when the game is the kind you'd pull out on a train.

I keep coming back to games that draw paths by dragging a finger, because it turns the touchscreen from a problem into a feature. When it works, it feels more direct than a mouse ever did. When it doesn't, you spend the whole session fighting the screen.

If you're a developer reading this: test your controls on a cheap phone, with a case on, while standing up. That's where most of us actually play.