What actually makes touch controls feel good

The biggest sin in mobile gaming isn't bad graphics, it's controls that fight you. A game can look stunning and still feel awful if the virtual buttons float in the wrong place or the hit zones are too small for a real thumb.

Good designers think about the dead space under your thumbs. Important buttons sit where your hands naturally rest, not where they look tidy in a screenshot. Generous invisible hit areas around a button also hide the small inaccuracy that comes with poking at glass.

Customisation is the other half. The best games let you resize, move and remap controls. If a title gives you that, it usually means the developers actually tested it on phones, not just an emulator.

When I review a game I spend the first hour just feeling the controls while doing something distracting, like watching TV. If I keep mis-tapping, no amount of art will save it.