Google's Pixel 11 Pro XL can run Dark Souls Remastered through a modified build of DroidDeck, according to testing published by developer William Allen on GitHub.
DroidDeck aims to deliver a handheld SteamOS environment on top of Android, but its official releases focus heavily on Qualcomm's Adreno graphics. Allen, who works under the handle wallentx, put together an experimental fork designed to communicate with the PowerVR hardware inside Google's flagship phone. His test environment relies on libhybris to bridge the phone's proprietary display drivers with the underlying Linux software stack.
The early results show actual gameplay. Dark Souls Remastered booted and ran during Allen's initial manual setup. A second title, Tiny Combat Arena, failed outright on default configurations before loading cleanly once he applied the experimental graphics profile.
An update pushed on 11 October formalised the tweaks into a toggle, letting testers swap between Standard and Experimental graphics profiles inside the app. Allen later opened a pull request to merge the work into upstream DroidDeck, confirming that automated build checks passed and that the packaged APK successfully launched both games on his retail phone.
Crashes and Unmerged Code
Do not expect to turn your phone into a dependable Steam Deck substitute just yet. Running desktop games on mobile GPUs without vendor-sanctioned drivers remains messy, and Allen flagged serious stability faults during his runs. In one instance, a PowerVR graphics lock-up triggered an unprompted device reboot. Performance across a wider catalogue of Steam titles has not been tested, and upstream maintainers have not accepted the pull request.
Parallel efforts are underway for older Google hardware as well. On 11 October, developer SPLATPLAYS shared a separate Mali and PanVK build aimed at Tensor G3 phones, including the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8a. That fork managed to get the desktop UI, gamepad controls, Firefox and basic OpenGL software running on a Pixel 8 Pro. Steam Big Picture mode, however, failed to stay up, showing a splash screen before dropping straight to a black display.
For now, reliable handheld PC emulation on Android remains tied to Snapdragon chipsets. These community patches do not provide a turnkey gaming platform, but they prove that Google's non-Adreno silicon is not entirely cut off from running desktop software.
MDFiled by The Mobile Desk
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