Designing Mobile Games For Different Platforms: iOS vs. Android

Introduction to mobile game development

Mobile games have become popular with its engaging and on-the-go entertainment punch that they offer. Apart from the casual candy crushing, new gamers want more. Brutal difficulties, character development, and intricate worlds are keeping audiences enthralled. They tend to break the barriers between traditional console and mobile experiences.

This change in player preference calls for a platform capable of withstanding such complex designs. Here lies the debate around Android vs. iOS game development. Designing the game and the dedicated performance platform go hand in hand.One must know how much strength each has and where they are weak. Therefore, it will be much help in coming up with a masterpiece that not only pushes the limits of mobile gaming but also creates a smooth, engaging experience for players.

In this blog we will discuss which platform you should choose to make your next project successful. Let’s deep dive into all the tech and non-tech considerations of android and iOS game development. Ready to decide which platform is the best for you?

Importance of considering different platforms for designing and developing mobile games

• The Platforms: Mobile game design calls for careful thoughts across different platforms. Whether it is an Android or iOS mobile game design, each has unique characteristics against, which the developer must work. Enhancing them to these platforms’ strong and weak points will go a long way toward ensuring a good user experience.
• iOS: Designing iOS mobiles games involve screen dimensions, different processor performance capabilities, and Apple-specific UI guides. Developers put effort into making slick, natural experiences that obey iOS norms. iOS game developers must keep updating themselves on the latest features to utilize all possibilities of the platform.
• Android: Different mobile devices and hardware specifications in the Android ecosystem raise challenges for android game app development. First and foremost complexity is android mobile based responsive design and development. The developers can only ensure extravagance on the various games working on different screen sizes and power levels. Flexibility and scalability are largely emphasized in the Android mobile game design since it is really very diversified.
• Wild card: Cross-platform mobile game development is gaining popularity. The domain lets when explored allows developers create games that would be able to deploy on both iOS and Android. This is done with the ability of minimal platform-specific code. This helps bring down the development time and cost but sometimes requires further optimization on each platform to squeeze out the most in performance and user experience.
• A stroke of success: What successful designers are aware of is the subtlety of mobile games for each platform and how to approach those differences. They engage players within both iOS and Android devices for developing experiences with lieu of concerned platform features that guarantee a stable core gameplay experience across all of these platforms.

Overview of iOS and Android

iOS as a Platform for Mobile Game Design and Development

iOS game development allows for an only integrated ecosystem of mobile games aided by robust hardware-software integration by Apple. It ensures predictable performance and easier optimization for developing games across a uniform lineup of devices.

Integrated Hardware and software: Apple always has a consistent device launch lineup. Although they look pretty similar, the specification manages to amaze their users every time. But why are we pinpointing specifications? Well the specifications are the heart of any game. And Apple offers some of the best integrated hardware and software for the performance of your mobile games.

Apple App Store: Now Apple app stores have already set the standard of premium feels. Users who use Apple game app incorporated devices are in it for a premium feel too. This high quality standard platform gives the best visibility to your mobile games.

Tools For Game development: Swift and Xcode empowers newbie mobile game developers to experiment and achieve their targeted iOS users. These development tools offered by Apple for native app development allow users to build games with amazing features.

Android as a Platform for Mobile Game Design and Development

Android game development exposes your game idea to a mixer of diverse users. There are 69.9% android users worldwide. Android by nature is an open source operating system. This means there is not limit to customization as the flexibility of the OS is unbelievably amazing. So let’s see what’s the best part of developing a game for Android OS platform.

Diverse User Reach: Every year there are tons of android devices manufactured from various mobile companies. They cater to different needs of users and since the mobile gaming boom, manufacturers have focused on outflowing the best mobile game based devices. As a android game developer, this gives you a diverse market to test your developed games. As every mobile company has their own sets of manufacturing ideas and expertise to bring out the best of mobile games.

Hyper Personalization: Android always hits the hammer with hyper-personlization. Whether its software or hardware compatibility, they leave no stone unturned. Hence developing game for users who love personlized experience becomes easy for you. You can really let that creative and technical river of yours to flow in every direction.

The Play Store: The Google Play store has extremely helpful features supporting both the user and developer end. The categories, revenue practices, the wide user reach, the beta testing phase, etc. It really opens amazing avenue for you as a developer when launching your mobile games.

We want you to Determine Which Platform Is Better?

While thinking of iOS vs. Android game development, one begs the question of which one is best for mobile games. This debate takes the view of weighing strengths against challenges, taken to task by the biggest mobile game developers in respect to each platform. Let’s find out which offers the most compelling advantages for both developers and gamers alike.

Designing for iOS

If you are looking to develop mobile games for iOS than you must consider the platform specific technicality. Platform specific approaches also help you in the launch phase but that is something later to discuss. On a deeper level you should understand the unique advantages and constraints of developing iOS mobile game apps. This clear understanding of the platform helps you in making decisions during ideation to monetization strartergies for your games.

Any iOS game development proces takes into consideration of the following device specific list:

• The device specific features
• Guides on user interface
• Performance optimization.

Following the pre-determined platform guidelines allow your users to enjoy games to the fullest without facing experience-specific complexities. Let’s move over to our simplified 5 step overview of iOS mobile game design and development:

1. Ideation and Market Research: Come up with ideas for games that would be enjoyed by the iOS audience. Research the modern trend in this niche, highly popular games in App Store, to develop your concept.
2. Design and Prototype: Document the game design in as much detail as possible, describe the gameplay, story, and art. Then, create a rudimentary prototype to test the main mechanics and how users will engage with it.
3. Development and Testing: Develop the game with languages specified only to iOS. Following apple guidelines, design the User Interface. Test vigorously on various devices based on iOS.
4. Submission to App Store and Launch: After the first two excrutizaing phase of game development process you will to move towards result oriented development now. Tremendously prepare all the required material and submit it to the store for review. Once it is approved, the game is launched along with marketing strategies.
5. Post-Launch Support: Monitoring user feedback, bug fixing, and issues resolution with regular updates to keep users engaged with the game and further improvements based on player feedback.

It is through this step-by-step process that iOS game developers are empowered to develop experiments and deliver compelling mobile games that leverage all capabilities the iOS platform has to offer for mobile game development. It is this need for attention to detail and depth of understanding of the ecosystem that makes the mobile game development process on iOS so challenging, ensuring that the final product meets all Apple customers’ expectations.

Designing for Android

We have already talked about how the diverse ecosystem of the platform affects the development approach of a game. For example, take the process and phases of Android game development. The platform has a wide range of devices, different screen sizes, and hardware capabilities pose some challenges and opportunities for a developer. Therefore, flexibility and scalability are supposed to be the main objectives of the design in a mobile game for Android. As you are focusing on providing a consistent experience on various devices to your android users.

Overview of the Android Game App Development Process in Steps:

1. Concept Ideation: Generate game concepts off the Android user’s preferences and the Android platform’s features.

2. Market Analysis: Observe and analyze the latest Android games which have been successful and current trends on the Google Play Store.

3. Game Design Document: A holistic view of the game that comprises gameplay mechanics, narrative, and visual style.

4. Prototyping: The basic version of the game that tests core mechanics and engagements by users shall be developed on different Android devices.

5. Creation of Assets: Publish and create graphics, sound effects, and music for Android with different screen resolutions and various aspect ratios.

6. Programming: Coding in the languages specific to Android, with a focus on making performance optimized across a myriad of devices.

7. Designing UI/UX: Creating an intuitive interface that adheres to material design. But the most strategic and crucial approach to android mobile game design is keeping scalability in mind. Your game needs to be able to adapt different screen sizes without ruining the user experience.

8. Testing: Test this application rigorously on a wide array of Android devices to determine its compatibility and performance. Again just a reminder this is one of the most crucial phases of your mobile game development process.

9. Iteration: Refine game play, graphics, and performance based on feedback from various device types.

10. Publishing on Google Play: Material creation for the store should be prepared and the game submitted for review in the Google Play Store.

11. Launching and Marketing: Game launch and strategies executed for marketing will let the developed app be visible among others within the crowded Android market.

12. Post-launch Support: Observe user feedback, fix bugs, and render updates to keep the game fresh for the different Android user base.

The process of android mobile game design and development requires consideration of the platform’s fragmentation. This involves balancing performance optimization with wide-ranging device compatibility to create successful games. Designing engaging experiences that reach a large audience of mobile players can help developers make up for the shortcomings of Android’s diverse ecosystem.

Key differences between iOS and Android

Feature

• iOS
• Android
• Hardware & Software

Standardized environment — Apple controls both hardware and software — leading to consistent performance across iPhones and iPads, which enhances the ease of development for iOS mobile game designers.

A fragmented landscape with independent manufacturers sporting different hardware capabilities leads to increased testing of device compatibility by Android game app developers.

Development Tools

Xcode is proprietary and provides an optimized workflow so as to make the project development cycle much easier, which, in turn, reduces costs for iOS game developers.

Developers will have more flexibility with Android Studio or using third-party game engines like Unity or Unreal Engine. But it will increase in mobile game development cost and complexity.

App Store Distribution

While strict review on the App Store gives a guarantee for very high-quality games, it may be time-consuming, hence posing a delay in launching your iOS mobile games.

While offering you more choices in terms of Android game apps, relaxed Google Play Store review allows publishing faster for android mobile app developers.

Monetization

The in-app purchases may be a little more costly because Apple takes its cut of the sales from an App Store, defraying upon every mobile game developer’s monetization strategy for iOS games.

Flexible In-app purchasing, subscription, and advertising — these are considerations for making a monetization plan for an Android game app development.

Target Audience

Early adopters, with an increased willingness to pay a bit more for the best iOS mobile games. This is expected to be a blessing to developers who attach value to their experiences’ quality.

Put your targeted audience in the center in your android game development process.

And Android has diverse demographics with varying spending habits.

Mobile game development complexity

It becomes simpler due to the single standardized platform, but stricter review processes increase the complexity for iOS game developers.

When we consider android platform for launching your mobile game we talk about the devices. Hence diverse device preference affects the mobile game development process and its complexity.

Conclusion: Final Thoughts!

Mobile game design has to respect factors that usually become only platform-specific. Both iOS and Android have pros and cons. They generally affect the development process in numerous ways but to be specific; stylistically and technically.

While discussing iOS vs. Android for the purpose of game development, a host of other decisions provide an impact on programming, designs, and more significantly, monetization. Balancing these factors is crucial for making successful mobile games.

Since such projects involve complex work, you can choose to outsource your project to a mobile game development company experienced in developing the best mobile games. Only in this kind of case will the ingenuity of all the problems associated with each platform be dealt with, leaving the core creative aspects of the game intact. Ultimately, the right platform choice depends on the project’s specific goals and target audience.