Crystal Caves – Running Game on Steam Deck / Linux

Getting Dosbox to run on Steam Deck can be a bit of a chore, but I jumped through the hoops so you don’t have to. Follow this step-by-step guide to get your Apogee games running on your Steam Deck.

Intro

All credit goes to Paarma !

Getting Dosbox to run on Steam Deck can be a bit of a chore, but I jumped through the hoops so you don’t have to.

If your Crystal Caves opens up into a basic Dosbox screen, it means it couldn’t find your game’s config file. To fix this there are few steps you need to take. It helps if you have a keyboard to go with this, but it is doable with the Deck’s own keyboard too.

This guide should work with the other games in the pack too with small modifications.

Boot to Steam Desktop

1. In deck, keep power betten pressed for a few seconds, release and press Switch to desktop.
2. Find Steam from the bottom right of the and open the steam library (click on the steam icon at the bottom-right tray with left trackpad)
3. Go to Crystal Caves, and make sure it’s installed.
4. Right click Crystal Caves on the games list and select properties.

Change Launch Options

1. In general tab click on launch options
2. Write the following (including quotes, conf name might not need to be all caps):
   • -conf “steamapps\common\crystal caves\crystal caves\CRYSTAL.conf”
3. Close the dialogue

Modify the CRYSTAL.conf File

1. right-click on the Crystal Caves again go to Manage -> Browse local files
2. In the file browser go to the Crystal Caves folder. (you can delete the .bat and Crystal Caves.app if you wish, they are not used)
3. Find CRYSTAL.conf and open it with text editor of your choice. (you might need to install one via Discover if you don’t like VIM, notepadQQ is nice)
4. On row 28 find output=opengl under [sdl] change this to output=overlay to prevent Dosbox from crashing (at least in my case).
5. Next go to row 247 with the mount c command and change the path from .. into “.\steamapps\common\Crystal Caves\Crystal Caves”

The End

• Go back to steam and do a test run. It should display the episode selection screen now once it runs.
• Once you’re happy with the results boot back to game mode from desktop.