CoolGames Design & Technical Guideline

Before your game is published, there are some design and technical requirements we have for your game. We’ve put together this document based on our years of collective experience developing, testing & publishing HTML5 games to the web, and beyond that to ensure your game is enjoyed by the largest audience possible.

If you have any questions about these requirements, please feel free to email your licensing manager, and if you have technical questions about implementation, e-mail dev-support@coolgames.com.

Our in-house QA team will validate these items (in addition to basic compatibility certification) before approving for launch and will reach out to you directly

We look forward to publishing your game!

DESIGN REQUIREMENTS

Adaptive Display/Orientation

If your game is designed to be played in a portrait orientation (height is bigger than its width) then your game will need to have the ability to detect its orientation & the device being used (desktop or mobile). An expanded UI/screen for desktop users needs to be provided to enable users viewing the game in a landscape frame on desktop, and portrait view on mobile.

A good example of this implementation – Bubble Academy: //www.coolgames.com/en/bubble-academy.html

Bubble Academy is a portrait designed game. When loaded on a mobile phone,

Bubble Academy is a portrait designed game. When loaded on a mobile phone, game will load as a portrait game, with the game board filling the horizontal space appropriately. However, when you play the game on a desktop PC, the game’s background & UI elements expand to fill the additional horizontal space.

No Visual Flickering Between Transitions

If your game transitions between screens (i.e. between the splash, the loading screen and then the game’s main menu), the transitions should be visually seamless. No blinking black screens or blank screens that cause a flickering sensation. The loading process should appear visually smooth to the player. The same holds for any in-game screen transitions.

Must Be Playable with Touch and Mouse

Our players play games on a wide variety of devices including laptops, tablets, phones and desktop PC’s. Your game should be designed to be playable on any of these platforms. This means mouse/keyboard input should work as well as touch input. Additionally, if your game displays on-screen directions, it should tell non-touch users to use the mouse/keyboard and touch users to use tap.

UI & Button Placement

Do not place important UI elements, buttons, or critical gameplay areas at the edges of the screen as these areas may be obscured by mobile browser UI (specifically on iOS) or the CoolGames Menu tab.

High-Score

All games must have a high-score system integrated. At the end of each level the high-score should be shown and submitted to the SDK High-score pop-up.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

Beyond the Design requirements outlined above, CoolGames requires that all games satisfy basic technical certification requirements. This is to ensure your game works on the broadest set of browsers and devices possible.

Game Code & Engine

Please submit your game with non-minified/ non-obfuscated code.

The game should not be built in GameMaker, Construct 2, GameSalad or Unity (basically any tool that builds the game in a scripting language and then compiles it out to JavaScript).

Fonts & Localization

If your game is being considered for localization by your licensing manager, your game will need to use standard fonts, loaded locally for text display and no bitmap fonts.

Additionally, if text strings in your game can be stored in a separate language/text file (preferably csv or json file) rather than directly in the game code, it will make localization a faster & easier process.

Operating Systems, Browsers & Devices

At a high level, your game should work on the following browser/OS combinations and the following hardware (equivalent or better)

* – iOS does not allow non-Safari browsers. Even Chrome for iOS is using Safari webview to render web content

Feature Checklist

We run through the following feature checklist for each game. Make sure your game qualifies for the next features and we advise testing the game properly on multiple browsers and devices: