Touch controls that don't fight you

The single biggest reason I abandon mobile games has nothing to do with content. It's controls. A beautiful RPG with floaty, mispositioned buttons will lose me faster than an ugly game that feels right under the thumb.

Good touch design usually means fewer, bigger targets placed where fingers naturally rest. Turn-based combat sidesteps the problem entirely, which is why games like Ember of the Nine Realms feel so comfortable. Real-time games have to work harder.

My advice when trying anything new: play ten minutes with the controls alone, before judging the story or art. If your thumb is tired or you keep hitting the wrong thing, no amount of plot will save it.

Developers who nail this detail rarely get praised for it, because good controls are invisible. But they're the whole reason some games stay installed for months.