Why do all these mobile games look like my phone’s UI?

It’s been decades since games started implementing communication devices in games that resemble our real cell phones – and it’s often a successful mechanic for separating and merging menus and tracking progress. But lately I’ve noticed a strange trend: mobile games set entirely inside a simulated mobile device. In other words, mobile games that make you feel like you’re on your phone when you play. And frankly, I’m sick of it.

Take Guildlingsthe very cute turn-based RPG. The game begins with you, a character named Coda, discovering your magical phone (also called a tome). The phone comes with a purple, fairy-like wisp that acts like your avatar and guides you through the world – as your tome takes you to new places in Worldaria, you use your wisp to guide guilds (also known as wizards) through combat and exploration.

Image: Sirvo Studios via Polygon

The game eventually gets into these more complex interactions – you can move around, investigate with various items, recruit new guild members, and eventually fight other wisps and wizards – but for the first 15 minutes or so, you’re basically just using a text-like chat on your magic phone to make basic decisions. It’s… frustrating. And it doesn’t do justice to the game’s otherwise decent gameplay.

This chat system is present throughout the game, and its clumsiness probably won’t bother most players. But my patience with my real phone is wearing thin, because this thing has become more tool than gadget. When I play a game on it, I want to forget how annoying it is to use my phone. Instead, I’m often faced – especially at the start of a game – with an interface that vaguely mimics my real phone’s interface, but with fewer choices and less control.

There are many titles that successfully implement the design of an in-game phone. Almost every mystery game I’ve played involves a phone, and it’s not the most exciting part of the game, but it’s often unobtrusive – you usually get notifications triggered by location or storyline, and you don’t need to use the fake phone otherwise. In Guildlingsthe game Is the phone, and for that reason, I really have to try and get into it. Also, it’s not the only example of a clunky phone-within-a-phone game I’ve found.

In particular, the in-game texts seem a bit trite, as this format seems to be a much easier way to create in-game conversations than having multiple characters talk to each other. An Elmwood Trail is an example of this. The game is well-written and reasonably interesting, but it mostly takes place in fake iPhones that only give you two options for each text you send. For a game, that’s predictable – but for a phone, it’s extremely limiting.

Image: Techyonic via Polygon

In the opening scenes of Elm woodyou’re a detective choosing answers to send to an unknown number trying to blackmail you into solving a case. The conversation is fine, but for me it ends up being a letdown because I don’t find it fun to wait for someone to respond to my text. I also wish I could choose between more than two options – we know the technology is out there to type in our own answers and let the game process and decide what happens next based on the keywords we send (I’m looking at you, Writers). I realize that this kind of game would be much more work to develop, write, and design, but something in between would be wonderful.

As Elm wood As you progress, you collect more evidence to examine, and one of the first pieces is another character’s phone. This device contains some impressive details that should be celebrated: emails with clues, photos of the character’s cat, a Pixabowl app (aka Instagram).

But this setup is not convincing for me because it is so similar to my real phone that it is almost stressful. Perhaps a younger audience will find this more more compelling than a game without phones. Ultimately, I wish the developers wouldn’t rely so heavily on a watered-down version of a real-world object that can do anything to tell their stories.

In Elm woodfinally, you can interact with items on your desk in addition to your device-based evidence. I don’t want to outright bash this game, because overall it’s not bad – but I do think it feels kind of unimaginative to use incoming texts and calls to introduce the story. Plus, I think there’s a lot more interesting commentary to be made about phones and metagaming.

Image: Nerial/Devolver Digital via Polygon

Governed is an example of a game that uses elements of a smartphone-like interface, but those elements are so fragmented that the game is still really entertaining. The game uses the “swipe left for no, swipe right for yes” format of many dating apps, guiding you through binary decisions that will lengthen or shorten your reign as king. You can read it a bit as a commentary on the way we use dating apps (er, the way You Using dating apps – I’m married) – don’t think, just swipe. The game even encourages players to read slower to fully understand the implications of their decisions, which sounds like advice many of my friends who use dating apps could internalize.

Image: Mihoyo via Polygon

There are also Honkai: Star Railthe hot RPG with turn-based combat – and an in-game phone with superpowers. The (very good, very fun) game takes place outside the device, which is used only for communication between characters and tracking missions. Honkai achieves something I haven’t seen anywhere else: the phone UI in this game is better than my real phone’s. It’s faster, has a sleeker design and intuitive menus, along with cheeky texts that come across as nice surprises rather than intrusive notifications.

I would be a fool to think that phones will disappear in games, and I don’t want that to happen. But I’m really more excited about mobile games that create a version of my phone that more more exciting than the one I use all day, every day. Especially since modern phones are lightning fast and practically ubiquitous, I like to play games that synthesize or critique our real-world use of our smartphones rather than replicate it.