Best Practices

Here's some advice on making your game a great experience for the players!

Use Portrait Mode

Dusk players love be able to play with one hand so your game should use portrait mode 📱

Avoid UI Like Menu Screens, Pause Buttons, High Score Screen, etc.

Dusk’s UI provides a simple way to pause/play/restart that works for all games so you don’t need a menu screen or a pause button in your game. This lets players get into the action of your game, thereby making it faster to start playing and more fun for players.

Avoid Ads, Branding and Links

One of the amazing things about Dusk is that there’s no ads. Leave out any ads, branding and links from your game to keep the focus on the gameplay experience 🧘

Avoid Using Cookies, localStorage or IndexedDB

Players expect any level information to persist indefinitely, but iOS/Android may reset the cache and clear this information. We're working on a way to make saving data more robust and sync it across devices, but until then please avoid saving data.

Avoid Loading Bars and Calling Dusk.initClient() Prematurely

Dusk shows an animation while your game is loading. It's a smoother player experience to only have one progress bar to load your game. Avoid having a loading screen in your game by waiting with calling Dusk.initClient() until your game has fully completed loading.

Gameplay Should not be Affected by Screen Size

Your game should ideally scale from small narrow phones with resolutions like 280×653 to wide tablets with resolutions like 1280×800. The gameplay area can be even less on small phones, e.g. only 450 pixels high. Gameplay should not be affected by aspect ratio or resolution. Make sure your game scales to cover the entire screen to provide the best experience.

Gameplay Should Start Easy and Simple

As a game dev, it's easy to think that your game is very simple to understand. That's because you made it 😅 Players will need to understand how your game works and what everything means. For that reason, we highly recommend you start your gameplay simple and easy.

Use Icons Instead of Text

Many players speak little to no English so it's ideal if your game can be understood without understanding English.

Support Two Players

The majority of rooms on Dusk have exactly two players. For your game to be most successful, we recommend that it supports playing and is fun when played with one other person.

Support Spectators

Players on Dusk can spectate your game 👀 This can happen in many ways, e.g. if someone joins after the room has hit your game's maxPlayers or if someone joins after your game has called Dusk.gameOver(). You can identify spectators by having yourPlayerId as undefined (see Player Info). Spectators should see all gameplay, but not have any UI for performing actions.

Polish Your Dusk Profile

Adjust your name, avatar, and description in Dusk app Profile tab. Your profile will be publicly visible in Dusk app for games that you have created or contributed to.