Develop Mobile Games with Platform Optimization

This skill covers the platform constraints and optimization principles specific to mobile game development, treating mobile as the most constrained platform - one that must respect battery life and player attention above all. It frames five key constraints and their strategies: touch input needs large hit areas and gesture support, battery life requires limiting CPU/GPU usage, thermal limits require throttling when the device heats up, varying screen sizes require responsive UI, and interruptions require pausing gameplay when the app backgrounds.

For touch input specifically, it contrasts touch with desktop/console controls - touch is imprecise and occludes the screen with limited on-screen buttons but supports gestures, while controllers are precise with no occlusion and many buttons - and recommends a minimum touch target of 44x44 points, visual feedback on every touch, avoiding precise-timing requirements, and supporting both portrait and landscape orientation.

For performance, thermal management should reduce visual quality as the device warms, limit frame rate as it gets hot, and pause effects entirely at critical temperature. Battery optimization notes that 30 FPS is often sufficient, the app should sleep when paused, GPS and network usage should be minimized, and dark mode saves battery on OLED screens.

App store requirements are split by platform: iOS requires privacy labels, an account-deletion path if account creation exists, and screenshots for all device sizes; Android requires targeting the current year's SDK API level, 64-bit support, and recommends using app bundles. Four monetization models are matched to game type: premium pricing suits quality games with a loyal audience, free-plus-in-app-purchases suits casual progression-based games, ads suit hyper-casual high-volume games, and subscriptions suit games with ongoing content updates or multiplayer.

Anti-patterns to avoid include porting desktop controls directly to mobile instead of designing for touch, ignoring battery drain instead of monitoring thermals, forcing landscape orientation instead of supporting player preference, and requiring an always-on network connection instead of caching and syncing.

Use this skill when designing or optimizing a mobile game's controls, performance, store compliance, or monetization strategy around the specific constraints of phones and tablets.

Output is platform-specific guidance and constraint tables covering touch design, thermal/battery management, app store requirements, and monetization model selection for the game being built.

Mobile game developers who need to design controls, performance budgets, store compliance, and monetization around the specific constraints of touch, battery, and thermal limits rather than porting desktop or console assumptions - whether shipping a new title or auditing an existing one against these mobile-specific constraints before submission.