Games on Pinephone

[gamerminstrel]

I know there was a thread from 6 months ago talking about Retropie, but can we have a dedicated thread somewhere talking about what games work on the pinephone? I really like the idea of people posting here how they manage to get what game to work.

On Mobian, you have access to the full Gnome Software app, but there's literally no way to know if a game will "Just work", or "work but not fit on the screen", or just crash upon opening. The UBPorts app store is... kinda rough. Last I tried it a lot of apps just didn't work, and the games that did work were pretty minimal.

Atm I'm using Mobian, and:

-The only game I've installed that ran with zero issues was Aisleriot.
-All of the generic games with "Gnome" in the title don't fit on the screen properly.
-Retroarch from the Software Store opens, but neither fits on the screen or accepts touch-screen keyboard inputs.

Has anyone else found games that are playable? If anyone else is interested I might look into making a spreadsheet or database that can be updated as progress gets made.

[gamerminstrel]

Plot twist; I flashed the latest nightly of Mobian, and as of right now the Gnome Software app crashes instantly when I try to do anything but check for updates. I get the feeling the powers working on Mobian would already know if something this big is broken

[Markdanni123]

yeah would e great to know what runs on the system

[fernando_c_m]

Has anyone else found games that are playable? If anyone else is interested I might look into making a spreadsheet or database that can be updated as progress gets made.

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=11058
This could help you with the games not properly scaling.

[SwordfishII]

AFAIK not much will work right now as scaling is in progress for most stuff. You could compile it for the pinephone though and some stuff may work then.

[gamerminstrel]

AFAIK not much will work right now as scaling is in progress for most stuff. You could compile it for the pinephone though and some stuff may work then.

I started going through all the games on Flathub, writing down what works, what doesn't. I'm honestly impressed. I assumed everything would just crash, but out of the 15 or so games I tested, only one crashed. Almost nothing is made to play nicely with a touch screen, but if I plug in a mouse and keyboard (via USB-C hub)
then about 70% of games so far just work. Only 30% don't fit on the screen, so scaling is already being handled admirably well

There is a caveat though that in landscape mode, most games have the top and bottom of the screen cut off by the phosh UI elements. That's likely an issue with phosh that will go away as it gets more polished.

I'll post here with a real list once I've made some progress

[SwordfishII]

AFAIK not much will work right now as scaling is in progress for most stuff. You could compile it for the pinephone though and some stuff may work then.

I started going through all the games on Flathub, writing down what works, what doesn't. I'm honestly impressed. I assumed everything would just crash, but out of the 15 or so games I tested, only one crashed. Almost nothing is made to play nicely with a touch screen, but if I plug in a mouse and keyboard (via USB-C hub)
then about 70% of games so far just work. Only 30% don't fit on the screen, so scaling is already being handled admirably well

There is a caveat though that in landscape mode, most games have the top and bottom of the screen cut off by the phosh UI elements. That's likely an issue with phosh that will go away as it gets more polished.

I'll post here with a real list once I've made some progress

Nice! I'm looking forward to the keyboard to use with emulators. If the same controls for OpenArena are used on the pinephone that were used on the n900 I will be very happy too.

[DellaPeters]

Thank you for sharing.

[pfeerick]

They're not Pinephone specific - geared towards apps for mobile linux - but LINMOB has a list of apps, as well as a list of games... and I think there's some other lists as well..

https://linmobapps.frama.io/

https://linmobapps.frama.io/games.html

[lat]

pychess and xboard seem to work fine for playing chess.