What separates good touch controls from bad ones

Touch controls are the hardest part of mobile game design, and it shows. A brilliant game can be ruined by a virtual stick that drifts or buttons that sit exactly where your thumb rests.

The best controls we've seen share a few traits. They keep everything reachable in a comfortable thumb arc, they offer haptic feedback so you know an input registered, and they let you move the buttons around. Customizable layouts should be standard by now and still aren't.

One-thumb designs deserve special mention. Not everyone plays with two hands, and the games that account for that — usually casual and puzzle titles — end up feeling great on a crowded train.

My rule of thumb, no pun intended: if a game offers multiple control schemes and a sensitivity slider, someone thoughtful worked on it. If it locks you into one fixed layout, brace yourself.