What makes touch controls good, and what ruins them

Touch controls are where a lot of otherwise great mobile games fall apart. There's no physical feedback, your thumbs cover the screen, and small targets are a nightmare in motion. The best games design around those facts instead of fighting them.

The clearest sign of care is buttons that appear only when they're useful. Context-sensitive prompts keep the screen clean and stop you hunting for the right tap in a panic. Hollow Roots does this well, showing a climb button only near a ledge.

Another big one is giving players a choice. Tilt steering feels magical to some and awful to others, so a good racer offers a tap option too. Forcing one scheme on everyone is how games lose a chunk of their audience in the first ten minutes.

Hit areas matter more than button art. I'd happily take a slightly ugly, generously sized button over a gorgeous tiny one I keep missing. Designers often forget that thumbs are imprecise and sweaty.

When controls are invisible in the sense that you stop thinking about them, the game has won. That's the bar, and it's rarer than it should be.