my current game project is a 2d run-and-jump game, special-made for phones but should also work on tablets and computers.
2d run-and-jump games are notoriously difficult to adapt to different aspect ratios: there are some games that only benefit from the changed aspect ratio — like Sonic 2 when the 4:3 game was remade in 16:9 — but these games are the exception and generally it's too easy to accidentally reveal too much or too little of the surroundings when changing away from the originally intended aspect ratio.
to avoid these problems, i have to choose just One aspect ratio to make my game in and everything else will have black bars on the sides.
today, 16:9 phones are no longer used except by people who don't care at all about playing any games on their phone. almost all today-used phones have an aspect ratio of at least 18:9, up to 21:9.
since black bars get much worse the smaller the screen gets, i want to minimize them on the smallest screens at the cost of bigger black bars on bigger screens. smallest screens of course means phones, which means 18:9. this will still leave small black bars on wider screens — like my phone screen that has an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 — but they are minimal, especially compared to 16:9. so i want to choose 18:9 as the aspect ratio for my game.
do you think this is a good decision? if not, which aspect ratio would you choose instead for a 2d run-and-jump game on phones?
