Best devices for PC Emulation on Android
If you’re curious what the best devices are, here’s a few of my top picks:
- Snapdragon 8 Elite Device! AYN Odin 3 – (Review)
- Best All-Rounder Device! AYN Odin 2 Portal – (Review)
- Dual Screen Device! AYN Thor – (Review)
What is GameNative?
GameNative is a way to play your owned Steam, Epic & GOG games on Android devices.
That’s it, that’s the big reason to use it.
Installation
You can install GameNative through their Github, with whatever the latest release is at the time.
Setup
Open the APK, install the app and then open the app.
It’s going to ask for permissions for notifications, click Allow.
First things first, we have to sign in with our Steam account – you can use credentials or the QR code.
QR code is likely the easiest if you have the Steam app installed on your phone.
Close the popup and your games should start populating all over the place.
You’ll see a nice neon green Compatible text for games that should be compatible here.
Installing Custom Games
On the main home screen, at the bottom right, with the Plus icon, this is how you can add Custom Games outside of Steam (not Epic or GOG, we’ll talk about that in a bit).
I like to use the Filter at the bottom to filter the games out after I’ve installed them, so you can use this after.
Settings
But let’s go to your profile top right and then Settings.
Modify Default Config
Let’s head into Modify Default Config – any changes made here will apply to all games.
There’s only two things that matter though – both in the General tab.
The first is the resolution, let’s leave this at 720p unless you find a game really can be pushed higher, and in that case, you’d do a per-game config like I’ll show later.
There’s also Show FPS here, and I’m going to turn this on so we can see how games play.
Driver Manager
Let’s head to Driver Manager and you’ll be able to see some drivers available for your device.
For Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 devices like the AYN Odin 2 series or the AYN Thor, I’d suggest using Mr Purple’s Turnip Drivers.
You can download the latest release zip.
Choose Import ZIP from device in GameNative, and select that driver zip we just downloaded and it’ll install it.
You should see it now under Installed custom drivers.
My philosophy is if the game doesn’t work with this driver, I wait until it does and just play something else, but you can use sites like EmuReady to see what people are using for specific games to get them to run.
If you did download a custom driver, head back to Modify Default Config, then the Graphics tab and change Graphics Driver Version to the newly downloaded driver.
Click Save and so now this will be our default configuration.
Epic & GOG Accounts
If we scroll down on the Settings page, you’ll see you can sign in with your GOG account and also with your Epic Games account.
So if you want that, do that now.
Use SD card as storage
On the Settings page, there’s also an option here to Write to external storage, meaning use your SD card as storage for games.
I think if you plan on using this, you’d likely want an A2 SD card for speed related reasons.
This would be a great option for example.
At least, that’s what I would personally use, but you can test with an A1 SD card.
Installing your games
Alright let’s head back and choose a game.
Let’s click Install and then Allow for the permission popup for files.
Some games will have multiple things you can install, like DLC, so make sure to double check what’s being installed and what you want.
Go ahead and click Install again to start the download.
Use known config
Before clicking play on any game, click the three dots top right, scroll down and select Use known config if it exists.
By default, games are not using the best, known good config and this will make a lot of games run that won’t if you don’t do this.
Then just go ahead and click Play and hope for the best.
Game isn’t running
If your game isn’t running, make sure you check EmuReady to see if anyone else was able to get it running and how they did so.
If they did, you can click the three dots top right, then Edit container, and this is where you can do per-game settings to fix your game.
60FPS to higher or lower refresh
If you want to boost your games to use a higher refresh rate that your display supports, it’s easy.
On the game page, go to the three dots top right, then the Environment tab and scroll down to DXVK_FRAME_RATE and adjust from 60 to whatever number you want.
Don’t forget the save icon top right.
