The mobile gaming industry has exploded over recent years, and millions of players around the globe are now able to enjoy games on their smartphones and tablets. There has never been a better time for game developers looking to get into mobile game development. And as far as making beautiful cross-platform mobile games is concerned, Unity is a powerhouse engine. Let’s dive right in and see how you can unlock the full potential of Unity to craft amazing mobile gaming experiences.
The Mobile Gaming Landscape
It all begins with an understanding of what’s happening in the mobile gaming landscape. From casual puzzle games to deep RPGs, you name it-you can find a wide variety of experiences on mobile platforms today. For a developer, this presents one enormous opportunity to get the word out. However, it presents one hell of a challenge: standing out in a crowded market.
This versatility makes Unity so perfectly suited to mobile game development. Be it a 2D, simple game or a complex 3D world, with Unity, you can bring your vision to the screen. But, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility – and in this case, optimization is that responsibility.
Optimization for Mobile: The Balancing Act
Optimization is not a nice to have but an absolute requirement in the development of mobile platforms. Although the mobile devices get stronger day by day in terms of processing power, memory, and battery life, they still are resource-scarce. Your job as a developer is to build a game that looks wonderful while running nice on as many devices as possible.
There’s this split-screen of a mobile game, showing the game before optimization, and the other one showing the game after optimization with its improved graphics and performance metrics .
Before and after: The effects of mobile optimization
Start with your assets. Textures and 3D models, for example, are notorious for bloating your game if not handled well; Unity provides some excellent tools for compressing textures and audio that you should use extensively. For 3D models, the less geometry, the better, and simplify them where you can without losing too much visual fidelity.
Another crucial aspect of mobile development is memory management. As mobile games are much smaller in scope than desktop games, you simply can’t afford gigabytes of RAM as you can for desktop games. Techniques such as object pooling will help reuse game objects instead of constantly creating and destroying, because this can be a performance killer when deployed on mobile devices.
Pro Tip: Never make a game under the assumption that it can be tested just in the Unity editor. What runs smoothly on your dev machine may struggle on a mid-range smartphone.
Piece Together Intuitive Mobile Controls
Developing mobile games is full of a lot of things to think about-the biggest issue: controls that feel natural in the touchscreen environment. The keyboard and mouse are yesterday; now it’s all about taps, swipes, and multi-touch gestures.
Input systems: Generally, Unity’s input system is very flexible to work with, enabling you to come up with some pretty highly customized control schemes if you will, suited to your game. However, whether you are making a super fast-paced action game that will require quick reflexes or a strategy game that needs precise touches, it requires you to take time fine-tuning the controls. Remember, best mobile controls often feel invisible-they are that intuitive so players hardly notice them.
Monetization: Profit Balances Player Experience
Facing it – we would love to make games, but we also need to earn our living. Mobile games monetize a lot in three directions: front-loading purchases, in-app transactions, and ad-supported models. But finding the right balance is all about gaining revenue without spoiling gameplay while using Unity’s powerful tools.
To drive this point further, the genre and intended audience of your game play a significant role in how you should monetize it. A casual puzzle game may live off of an ad-supported model, whereas the deep RPG may be better off monetized through in-app purchase. Regardless of the route that you choose, though, never forget about the experience of the player. Not a single thing will make players run any harder than the feeling of being constantly squeezed out for every last penny.
Follow the Mobile Development Arc
Building mobile games with Unity is always an interesting journey with all its experiments, challenges, and rewards. The deeper into this world you go, the more techniques you’ll find; there will be obstacles to overcome and hopefully even games enjoyed by players all over the world.
The mobile games space is highly fluid-just keep asking questions and experimenting. That being said, this newly gained power through Unity as your engine, and creativity as fuel, makes the amazing possibilities of what you can create limitless in the mobile gaming world.
Now, go fire up Unity, let your imagination drive wild, and start crafting the next mobile gaming sensation!
