Heroic Games Launcher

SteamOS and Proton showed me, what’s possible with gaming on Linux in general, but I also have a large collection of classic PC games (from the 90s until the mid 2000s) that I’ve purchased and will continue to purchase from GOG. This is why Heroic Games Launcher became an essential tool for me.

Heroic is available for all major operating systems and provides access to my GOG library, but also to the Epic Games Store and Amazon Luna (whatever that is…). I’m using the Flatpak version on my Linux laptop and on Steam Deck through KDE’s Discover app. Within Heroic you can download games from your libraries, install updates and conveniently run them from the grid of games.

Basic Features

For each game you can configure custom categories for grouping, sync savegames and achievements (when supported) and set the preferred Wine/Proton version. I’m always installing a recent GE-Proton version through the built-in Wine Manager. It’s oftentimes a good idea to look up a game in ProtonDB before the installation to check for known issues that might prevent it from running.

Steam Integration

On Steam Deck I also use the “Add to Steam” button after installing and configuring a game. This way I don’t need to switch to Desktop Mode all the time for playing individual games. It also gets a nice poster image and banner just like any other Steam game. Launching from Steam is compatible with savegame syncing, which slows down launching for just a couple of seconds.

Game Versions

A more obscure feature that I just recently needed is the ability to switch between specific versions of a game. After installation this feature is available as the Modify Installation command in the game’s menu. On one hand this is useful to e.g. switch between language variants of a game (if available). On the other hand you can downgrade to a known good version of the same game. The Tomb Raider I-III Remastered situation was the best use case for this. This remaster was almost perfect, until the publisher replaced the developer team Saber Interactive with a different team to port the game to mobile platforms and to add a new “Challenge Mode”. Sadly they broke the base game with that update and added countless of new bugs, that are still unresolved to this day.

So whenever I install TR123R I select the last stable version 1.0.5d from the menu and play the game without the new bugs. Thankfully GOG keeps these older versions around. Just keep in mind that savegames might be incompatible when switching versions.

Run EXE on Prefix

Another powerful feature is the ability run an executable in the game’s Wine/Proton prefix directory. For me this is useful whenever GOG does not offer a language variant in German of a game that I know was fully localized in German when released. Or even just to install a mod.

An example for this is the 2003 adventure game Runaway: A Road Adventure where I also own the original box. In a case like this I download a community language patch from deutschpatch.de after installing the English game from GOG. I put the patch installer exe directly into the game folder and use the “Run EXE on Prefix” button in the game’s settings to run it without the need for a Windows VM.

Importing Games

Similar to running patch installers is the ability to Import entire games that are not available on any of the supported digital storefronts. I used this to import my archived game installation of the (still fantastic looking) 2000 racing game Need for Speed: Porsche. This is of course limited by any disc-based copy protection mechanisms. Custom games can additionally be added by running an installer first, which avoids the need for having a separate Windows installation or VM.

I also use this functionality to add custom (standalone) Tomb Raider levels to Heroic. Like the high quality Tomb Raider: Side-Scroller Edition from trcustoms.org. It just works flawlessly.

Closing Thoughts

Overall I’m very grateful to the teams working on Heroic, and also on Wine, Proton, GOG, etc. With this setup I’ve been reducing my retro gaming backlog by a lot in the last year and (re-)discovered some great classics that would have otherwise required too much manual tinkering or a VM to run properly.