Making room for every screen.
· Updated · 2 min read
Every Eggverse game runs inside a cabinet that is either landscape or portrait. The default, Auto, follows the way you are holding the device, and you can pin either shape from the game's view control. Fullscreen is offered where the browser supports it. That is the whole system; the rest of this story is about why.
A browser arcade does not get to choose its screen. The same round of Cloud Hopper might be played on a wide laptop display, on a phone turned sideways, or on a phone held upright in one hand on a train. All three are normal. None of them is the design target.
One cabinet, two shapes
Landscape holds the wide layout, which suits the running and racing games where seeing further ahead is worth more than seeing higher. Portrait holds the tall layout, which suits the climbing and stacking games, and suits anyone playing one-handed. Since September 11 the cabinet always fits inside the visible screen, instructions and party details open in panels instead of taking a permanent sidebar, and the site navigation comes back when you leave a game.
Touch controls are their own design
Mapping a keyboard onto a touchscreen by drawing buttons where the keys were produces something playable and unpleasant. The arcade games use the whole playfield where they can: in Egg on the Run you hold anywhere to rise and release to fall, and in Bad Egg you walk with a thumb stick placed where a thumb already is. The keyboard version is not a translation of the touch version or the other way round.
What this costs
Supporting both orientations means every playfield has to make sense at more than one aspect ratio, and that constrains level design in ways a fixed-resolution game never has to think about. It is worth it. The alternative is telling a decent share of players to come back on a laptop.
One thing we got wrong along the way: the first responsive release quietly dropped the games' background artwork. It was a one-line styling mistake, and it was fixed the same day.
Can I play Eggverse on my phone?
Yes, in the browser, in either orientation. Every game has touch controls; nothing needs a keyboard.
How do I change a game's orientation?
Use the view control on the game screen and choose Auto, Landscape or Portrait. Auto follows your device.
Why is there no fullscreen button on my iPhone?
Some browsers, including Safari on iOS, do not allow web pages to go fullscreen. The button appears only where the browser supports it; the cabinet already fits the screen without it.