I spent the weekend playing Silksong on my phone — Here’s how

When the first ASUS ROG Ally dropped back in 2023, Hollow Knight was the very first game I played on it. I know, the game had been out for more than five years at that point, but it was my reintroduction to handheld gaming after nearly a decade of nothing but online live service games. And I was hooked.

Now that Hollow Knight: Silksong is out, I wanted to continue the trend of playing on a handheld rather than my gaming PC. But the landscape has changed since then, and now phones and Android gaming handhelds are more powerful than ever. Before I dusted off my chunky ROG Ally, I thought: Can I play this on my Android phone?

The answer is yes. It was actually even easier than I imagined.

Hollow Knight: Silksong isn’t a particularly demanding game, but I wanted to see just how far I could push it. I pulled out my trusty REDMAGIC 10 Pro, with a powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC, and snapped on a Backbone Pro telescopic controller. I’m already bad enough at this game, so I don’t need the extra handicap of touchscreen controls.

Silksong is available on a wide variety of platforms, but I chose to play via Windows emulation. There are a few key benefits here, but for me, the big one is having full control over the resolution. Other options, like emulating the Switch version or even streaming from the cloud, force a 16:9 aspect ratio. That’s fine for a gaming handheld like the Retroid Pocket Flip 2, but phones are much wider and I want to take advantage of all that screen real estate.

The next step is obviously to buy the game, and there I made a conscious decision to avoid the most popular platform, Steam. You can definitely emulate the Steam version on your phone, but there are a few extra steps, and you’ll have to log into your Steam account. I’d rather keep my credentials to myself, so I picked up the DRM-free GOG version.

After installing the game on my PC, all I had to do was plug my phone in and copy the game files into the Downloads folder. Then it was time to open the Windows emulator I use on my phone, called GameHub.

GameHub is a relatively new emulator that’s developed by GameSir, which also makes controllers. You can use other open-source options like Winlator, but I’ve found GameHub to be far more convenient. You will have to enter an email address and give a few extra permissions, but you can skip a lot of the setup and tinkering that usually comes with Windows emulation on Android.

From here, I just had to import the game into GameHub by selecting the .exe in the game files, and the app did the rest. It adds a new tile for the game in the app and creates a unique container that can be fully configured for better performance.

I decided to push my REDMAGIC 10 Pro to the limit, so I set it at the device’s native 2688 x 1216 resolution. Apart from that, I didn’t have to adjust any compatibility settings, and kept it on the default 8Elite-800.26 driver (instead of one of the newer drivers). The app also automatically detected my controller, so I didn’t have to configure any inputs manually.

And just like that, the game loaded perfectly, hovering between 100 and 140fps. I didn’t experience any graphical glitches or major framerate drops, even without tinkering with settings. Power usage sat around 8-10W throughout my testing with these settings.

However, I will say that it caused my phone to get uncomfortably hot. I knew that the REDMAGIC 10 Pro runs hot from previous testing, but after an hour or so the device was too hot to hold. I don’t have an active cooler (and it wouldn’t fit over my Backbone Pro controller anyway), so instead I decided to adjust the settings.

First, I lowered the in-game settings for Particle Effects and Blur Quality to Low. Access to these PC performance settings is yet another advantage of Windows emulation, since other platforms don’t give you as much control.

Then, I capped the framerate to 120fps within GameHub. Those two changes alone, without lowering the resolution, lowered the power usage to 7W, without any noticeable changes in gameplay.

If you’re not as stubborn as I am about getting the most out of your screen, you can also just lower the resolution. Reducing it to FHD resulted in well over 300fps and significantly less power draw.

For older phones, you’ll likely need to reduce the resolution, and you may need to try different drivers or compatibility layers. But assuming you have a relatively new device, you should be able to play Hollow Knight: Silksong at a decent framerate. It’s not a demanding game to play, so you don’t need a powerful gaming phone to play.

In fact, GameHub even promises support for some Mali devices. I haven’t had a chance to test any yet, but it’s good news for anyone who can’t use Qualcomm drivers.

While I prefer GameHub emulation for a more immersive and plug-and-play experience, there are a few other ways to play Silksong on your phone. Even within Windows emulators, you’ve got other options like GameNative or Winlator (which both GameNative and GameHube are based on). They require more tweaking and tinkering for the best performance, but you don’t have to create an account if you care about that.

Another advantage of GameNative is that it supports Steam cloud saves. This isn’t an issue for me since I’m playing the GOG version and don’t need to sync my save file, but it might be for you if you bought the Steam version.

But your options don’t stop there. If you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, there’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, which streams the console version from Microsoft’s servers. Silksong was added to Game Pass on day one, but the added latency can make the game more difficult, so I wouldn’t recommend it. It also only costs $20 to buy, which is only a little more than a single month of Game Pass Ultimate.

Another option is local game streaming. If your phone isn’t powerful enough to run Silksong, odds are your PC is. Using an app like Steam Link, Apollo/Moonlight, or my personal favorite, Razer Nexus, will give you a much better experience than streaming from the cloud, and you don’t have to pay a monthly subscription.

If you don’t have a PC, you can also try emulating the Switch version of the game. Eden, which I’d consider the best Switch emulator at this point, added support for Silksong on Friday. That’s just one day after the game was released.

However, getting the game off your Switch and onto your phone is a lot of work. You need to mod your Switch to extract the firmware and games, which requires time and expertise. Even then, you’ll also see black bars on the sides, since it’s limited to 16:9, and from what I’ve seen, performance is slightly worse.

No matter how you play, it’s undeniable that we’re in a new age of mobile gaming. As devices get more powerful and emulation software improves, the lines between platforms will begin to disappear. Retro consoles have already been conquered, but Windows emulation was always the final frontier. It’s still too early for most modern PC games, but at this point, it’s just a matter of time.