If you’ve played Pilot Perils, or seen certain media, you may have noticed that on occasion there is a bar located on either side of the screen. Pilot Perils started development as an Apple Ipad exclusive; As a result the game was made with the Ipad’s screen in mind.

Late in development we found our testers express significant demand for playing the game on regular phones, which have a smaller, but wider, screen. Implementing widescreen is more complex than you might expect, considering all our game logic and object placement was made with the Ipad screen in mind. leading to the following considerations.

• we could zoom the camera in on smaller displays, losing part of the vertical playing field and rework vertical content based on the wider screen, then ensure it still looks okay on the Ipad.
• we could have the game show more of the horizontal playing field while retaining the vertical view space and rework the content so horizontal elements load in based on the wider space, requiring a re-timing of significant portions of gameplay.
• we could leave the playspace the same, but use the extra space on the sides as additional space to put your thumbs; this means your fingers do not cover up the gameplay on smaller screens, and does not require any reworking of existing content.

As should be clear by now, we opted for the latter solution: adding extra space to place your thumbs while retaining the original design constraints. Every time you see these bars it simply means someone is playing on a wider screen!