Controls
Touch, keyboard or mouse: choosing the right control
The same game can feel completely different on two devices.
What you will do
- Match the control to the game, not to the device you happen to be holding.
- Tap-and-swipe games are built for phones and rarely improve with a mouse.
- Anything with aiming, dragging or precise timing is easier with a mouse.
- Keyboard games are usually the ones with arrow keys or WASD in the instructions.
The instructions on each game page tell you what the publisher intended, and it is worth reading them before you decide a game is broken. A game that seems unresponsive on a phone is often a mouse game wearing the wrong clothes.
As a rule: tapping, swiping and dragging belong on a touch screen. Aiming, hovering and anything that rewards precision belong on a mouse. Holding two keys at once belongs on a keyboard.
Touch screens forgive small mistakes and punish small hit areas, which is why the games that feel best on a phone are usually the ones with large, slow targets.
If you are playing on a shared or work laptop, remember that a browser game only takes input while the page has focus. Click once inside the game area if the controls ever stop responding.