Portrait vs landscape mode

[plicatibu]

In Flash / Android worlds the majority of games I saw are designed to be played in landscape mode but for HTML games it seems to me to be the opposite.

 

Why do you guys prefer portrait over landscape mode?

[fatalfluff]

Because it has been and is to this day very hard to hide browser navigation elements in a predictive and reliable way across devices and they consume much more screen real estate in landscape mode.

Also, a lot of people prefer playing casual mobile games in portrait position, because they can cover the whole width of their smartphone with the thumb of their hand and still hold the phone (play single handedly instead of gameboy-style) and devs cater to this preference.

[dev]

Not sure if it's a preference, really.

 

Let me put it like this. There are barely any portrait-mode HTML5 games built for desktop. Any portrait-mode game is built for mobile. It's the way you hold up your phone normally. 

 

Secondly, HTML5 mobile games generally can't use WebGL so they're vastly underpowered. This means game-design is usually centered around puzzle games, card games etc, games that aren't too CPU/Memory intensive. Such games generally work well in a grid + a UI bar below or above the grid. Such a setup works well in portrait mode. 

 

But I wouldn't necessarily say portrait modes are more popular. I'm more leaning towards landscape at the moment because I tend to be able to go full-screen and hide UI elements a little bit better.

[plicatibu]

I see.

 

Thank you both.

[remvst]

 This means game-design is usually centered around puzzle games, card games etc, games that aren't too CPU/Memory intensive. Such games generally work well in a grid + a UI bar below or above the grid.

I guess we don't have access to the same "game showcase" forum...