Arcade Berg aka. "Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg"

Work with the platform, not against it

The iPhone is a great, great piece of hardware for making games for. Not only does it have specifications allowing for some amazing stuff but it also has a fantastic market to boot if you want to earn a few bucks.

There are some great games out there. Some of my Favorites are Rolando, iFighter, FlightControl and iDracula. These games makes great use of the iPhone; especially Rolando.

I'm not one of those guys who thinks you should use every cool feature of the hardware, like multi-touch, tilting the phone, shaking it, blowing in the microphone, etc. But I do think you should think long and hard about what it has to offer before creating something.

I recently bought Zenonia, a great looking game, a big production and a hefty price at around $5.

There is one really simple way of knowing if you've done one of worst mistakes possible in an iPhone-game. Ask the question: Is there a D-pad on the screen using the touch-controls as input. If yes, your game is one big, fat fail!

I might be harsch, but I really think that if you're doing it, you're doing it wrong.

I can't hardly control Zenonia at all when trying to run around. I get no spatial feedback whatsoever, making it hard for me to "feel" when I play. I'm sure the game has many qualities. Heck, I've even found a bunch but I'm 100% that the game would have gained from redesigning its' controls.

D-pad. D as in Doom.

Okay, that's the classic D-pad issue which I see way too often.

Then, let us try out the menues and interaction, shall we? Say a block of text appears with a scroll-bar to the right of the text. Naturally, for scrolling you'd swipe your finger over the scroll-bar as in with pretty much every single one of the other applications for the iPhone, right? But Nooo! You press down on the "D-pad".

There's an "OK"-button in the middle of the screen. Naturally, I press it, like with pretty much every single one of the other applications for the iPhone, right? But Nooo! You press the Action-button in the bottom right of the screen.

"Of course", you can't press the buttons or swipe the scroll-bar.

When checking your inventory and stats, there are a bunch of buttons available. Do you press them? [...] Nooo! You use the D-pad and Action-button, even though the buttons are right there on the TOUCH screen.

I'm sorry, I'm sure there are people out there who thinks it's nice that they're sticking to the "classical control scheme" but I just don't think they're respecting the platform.