When it comes to playing PC games on Android, there are a few options, but none of them seem to offer a SteamOS-like experience. Up until now, that is. DroidDeck on Android can quite literally turn any Android device into a Steam Deck, and there’s no streaming trickery involved.
Installing DroidDeck on Android
Configuration tips and some extra features
Installing DroidDeck is simple, but you can’t find the app on the Play Store. You’ll want to make your way to the official DroidDeck GitHub page of the project, and then go over to the Releases section to grab the latest APK file.
Once it’s installed and set up with the necessary permissions (make sure to accept them), it’s time to import some games. DroidDeck puts the Steam launcher front and center, and setting it up takes less than a minute. You’ll essentially be downloading a version of SteamOS that is optimized for ARM devices, bundled with all the compatibility layers like Proton and FEX.
Functionality-wise, it is identical to SteamOS’ gaming mode. You get the full Big Picture Mode experience, along with the ability to install most plugins from Decky Loader. Installing games works like on a normal x86_64 device, but that’s not all DroidDeck can do.
DroidDeck supports alternative game launchers like GOG and Epic Games out of the box, plus a curious little toggle to enable Desktop Mode. It’s essentially a separate install that adds in a KDE Plasma desktop environment. It includes all your usual KDE applications and is, for all intents and purposes, fully functional.
Desktop mode is unfortunately still a bit of a novelty. You can’t do much with it, but it’s still nifty to have.
Testing out some games
Impressive performance, especially for an older chipset
Now we come to the fun part: actually playing some PC games from my Steam Library. The device I chose to test this on was a relatively older Lenovo Legion Tab, which comes equipped with 12 GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset.
It is a few generations old now, and you’ll likely have more luck playing these games on something like a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 or newer. That said, you’ll run into bottlenecks sooner or later, especially if you have little RAM or storage to spare—regardless of your hardware.
PC emulation on Android remains intensive, even though it’s taken a few massive strides lately.
As for the games to be tested, they were Mouse: PI for Hire, Batman: Arkham City, and Doom 3 (the BFG Edition). Doom 3 is arguably the easiest game to run of the trio, and it ran flawlessly, averaging a very playable 90 FPS.
Onto something a bit more intensive, with Batman: Arkham City. This might not be the newest entry in this list either, but it has very low system requirements and is still a pretty darn good game to sink a few hours into. It averaged 60 FPS, which is very playable, but took a while to stabilize (due to shader compilation).
Finally, we come to Mouse: PI for Hire, a game that was released this year. It’s built on top of the Unity game engine, and the optimization leaves much to be desired. At 900p, it averages around 20 FPS while standing still.
I did try out Pragmata, but it refused to launch out of the box, which is a bit of a shame. All of which goes to say that game compatibility (and performance) is a bit of a coin toss.
That’s taking into account things like upscaling, which was used very heavily in these tests. Simply put, these mobile chipsets do not have enough grunt (or cooling) to run modern titles at native resolutions, and so upscaling is the only answer to playable frame rates.
The app also supports frame generation, although I’d be wary of using it thanks to the additional latency overhead.
A lot of translation layers and some technical wizardry make everything work together
DroidDeck works on two fronts. The first is converting x86 binaries to something an ARM-based device can read. This is achieved using something like FEX, but the code is still for Windows with DroidDeck (and most other SteamOS mobile devices) running on Android.
The solution is to use something like ARM64 Proton to make it readable on Linux. Combined with SteamOS’ Big Picture Mode interface, it makes for a Steam Deck-like application that is surprisingly feature complete.
Overall, I’d say that DroidDeck performed better than I expected — remember, there’s multiple translation layers at work here, including converting x86 code to ARM. All of which goes to say that this is a very resource-intensive process.
It might not seem like it right now, but this is the future of gaming. Mobile devices will become increasingly popular in a world of dying x86 handhelds (with RAM and storage prices going through the roof), and PC gaming is something that is achievable on modern ARM hardware these days.