Mobile devices have a lot to offer gaming enthusiasts, with their biggest selling points often being portability and convenience. There’s something quietly spectacular about having a phone capable of playing pretty much any game in your pocket at all times. However, they do have a major limitation: size. Obviously, there’s no overcoming this while maintaining the portability, but if you’re not a regular mobile gamer, you might be wondering… how much does it really matter? Can complex games like casino table games be compacted to these small screens?
Let’s find out!
Clever Design Makes Good Use Of Space
Space is at an absolute premium on a mobile device, whether it’s a cell phone or a tablet. However, in recent years, designers have become positive experts in maximizing the utility of space. If you play modern casino table games on any well-designed platform, you’ll see how much thought goes into the layout of these pieces, ensuring they are as user-friendly as possible.
Take a game like poker, for example. Fitting poker effectively onto a small screen is no mean feat. There’s a lot of information to display, after all. Just look at how much space physical cards take when dealt out on a table like this:
On a digital interface, the player must have their own cards front and center, with information about the table also very accessible. Pot size, number of other players, seat position, and more must be available at a glance – but fortunately, designers have achieved this with enormous grace and success.
And if you play other casino table games, you’ll see similar thoughtfulness and clever use of all the available space. Many of the other games have less challenging space requirements, but the importance of good layout doesn’t diminish. Blackjack players expect a clean, uncluttered interface that gives them all the information they need without having to minimize or maximize tabs. Roulette, while not needing to display card faces clearly, must have room for the spinning wheel – after all, that is the heart of this game – and betting information.
Other Information Is Neatly Tucked Away
Another reason that casino table games work well on mobile devices, even those with very small screens, is that any extra information will be tucked away. Developers spend a lot of time determining which actions or bits of info are used less frequently, and putting these elements away in tap-to-open menus.
For example, the game’s rules might be folded away neatly in a little “i” or “extra info” button when you’re playing, freeing up as much space as possible for you to enjoy the game. At the same time, these aspects tend to be very easy to open when you do want to view the information or actions behind them, so you can still enjoy a seamless gaming experience.
Hover Text Has Been Transferred To Taps
On a big screen with a mouse, designers have a very useful tool available to them: mouse-over or hover text. As the name suggests, this appears when you put your mouse on the text in question. It’s a great tool because it minimizes clutter without hiding information or forcing you to open new pages to access it.
But with mobile devices, there is no mouse – and thus no mouse-over text. Instead, developers have had to think hard about how to handle this kind of additional info, and usually choose to make it available via a single tap instead. For example, where hovering over “Rules” on a desktop version might display an overlay of the rules, you might need to