Empire: Total War - iOS and Android Port

A brand new mobile UI designed and developed for apple and android devices.

Front-end development

UX / UI Design

UI Development

Porting a strategy classic to iOS and Android

Empire: Total War (originally released in 2009 for Windows and macOS) is widely regarded as one of the most ambitious strategy titles of its era. When I joined Feral Interactive in London as a UX Engineer—my first role after completing my master’s degree—I was tasked with helping bring this PC classic to iOS and Android for the first time.

This meant reimagining a dense, information‑rich strategy interface for touchscreens, modernising the UX, and ensuring it functioned seamlessly across the entire mobile device ecosystem—from small iPhones to large Android tablets.

My Role: UX Engineer ( Design and Front-end development )

As the lead UX Engineer on the project, my position sat directly between design and engineering. I worked as both:

A UX/UI Designer – responsible for interaction design, responsive layouts, and gameplay‑ready UI behaviour.
A Front‑End Developer – implementing the UI layer in code and ensuring it performed correctly across devices.

This hybrid role allowed me to prevent siloing between teams and ensure the UX vision was carried through all the way into the shipped product.

Testing Across Real Devices

Because mobile strategy games thrive or fail based on clarity and usability, testing played a major role in my workflow. I completed:

Software‑based responsive testing using development tools
Hands‑on testing with physical iPhones, iPads, and Android devices
Iteration cycles where I refined the layout, hitboxes, card sizes, typography, and interaction timings

Ensuring that the UI remained readable, responsive, and stable on dozens of screen sizes was one of the most challenging—and rewarding—parts of the role.

Result

My work helped transform a complex desktop strategy game into a fully touch‑optimised mobile experience, maintaining the richness of the original while ensuring it felt natural to play on modern devices. The project strengthened my skills in:

Responsive UX/UI design
Cross‑platform UI engineering
Prototyping and systems thinking
Collaboration across design and engineering
High‑fidelity implementation under technical constraints

Ensuring that the UI remained readable, responsive, and stable on dozens of screen sizes was one of the most challenging—and rewarding—parts of the role.