A lot of the decisions behind the original Cally’s Caves movement and combat were made based on the platform the game was shipping on. Screen real estate is a big issue with iOS games, especially ones that use virtual controls. A few years ago, an iOS game came out called “Pizza Boy” that utilized a virtual control idea that I thought was brilliant. Instead of including a virtual joystick that would move in 4 or 8 directions (or using 4 directional buttons), Pizza Boy used a “slider” for left and right movement and simply did away with up and down movement. I’m not sure if it was the first iOS game to use this tactic (that may be League of Evil, or others), but simplifying the control scheme like that minimizes the amount of screen real estate dedicated to controls.
Cally's Caves 