Game UX Best Practices

Conventions for games built on the Poe app platform. Apply these unless the app's design has a specific reason to deviate.

• Render a question-mark (?) button in the top-right corner that opens a "How to play" overlay explaining the rules, controls, and win condition. Players land in games cold from the For You feed and need an always-available way to learn the rules without leaving the app.
• Show whose turn it is prominently in multi-player turn-based games — display name + avatar of the active player, near the top of the screen. Don't make players hunt for it.
• Make the primary action obvious. At any moment there should be one clear thing the player can do next (tap to roll, drag to place, pick a card). If you can't point at it in one sentence, the UI is too ambiguous.
• Highlight tappable inputs. When only a subset of elements are interactive at a given moment (e.g. in a card game where only some cards are legally playable), visually distinguish them — glow, border, opacity, scale. Non-interactive elements should look non-interactive. Players shouldn't have to tap to discover what's allowed.
• Give immediate feedback on every input — visual state change, haptic (navigator.vibrate), or sound. Never let a tap feel like it did nothing, even if the move is illegal (show why it was rejected).
• Reach a terminal state cleanly. Wins, losses, and draws need an unmistakable end screen with a "play again" / "new game" affordance — don't just freeze the board.
• Persist enough state to resume. A player who closes the app mid-game and comes back via a push notification should land back in the same position, not a fresh instance.