Large targets are a fairness choice
Whack Zones uses wide holes so a correct decision survives a thumb. Pattern Pulse pads are large for the same reason. Tiny moles look precise and fail when the bus moves. If a game still feels like you hit the right place and died, that can be a hitbox defect—we want that report—or it can be a game that needed a table, not a pocket.
Charge-and-release titles (Basketball Shot, Putt Line, Goal Kick, Target Toss, Pin Bowl) ask you to hold without sliding off the control. Resting the phone on a bag is more honest than hovering over a moving sidewalk. Keep Up wants taps under the ball; a bouncing commute is a poor laboratory.
Some verbs hate rotation mid-round
Ice Drift, Color Path, and Slide Nine assume a stable rectangle. Rotating the phone mid-slide is how a gem becomes a hole. Landscape can help paddles and Air Hockey; portrait is the default for runners. We do not lock orientation on every title yet. If a rotate wrecked a round, that is information for us, not a personal failure.
Lane Switch and Gap Drop are one-thumb sidesteps. Endless Runner and Flappy Bounce are one-thumb hops and flaps. Two-thumb WASD fantasies belong on a keyboard. The playbook lists the primary input so you do not invent a second hand the glass cannot support.
When to pick a still puzzle instead
If your hands are cold, the train is moving, or you only have a minute between stops, Memory Match, Lights Out, and Block Merge will still make sense. Meteor Tap and Reflex Rush will punish the environment as if it were you. That is not a moral ranking of games. It is physics.
Mute is next to the frame on purpose. Pause is part of the shared shell. Use them. A round paused because a conductor asked for tickets is a successful sitting. A round mashed through an announcement is just noise with a score.