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Retroid Pocket Nova


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The kind of perfect mini Steam Deck!

My Retroid Pocket Nova came in the mail some days ago, and I’ve been spending some time setting this up, trying some games on it, and seeing how the games I’m currently working on run on it. I’ve been mostly just positively surprised by it so far.

I bought the thing to replace my broken Steam Deck (which I’m turning into a mini Windows desktop computer, maybe more about that later), and as an upgrade to my Anbernic RG35XX Plus. The thing I dislike in my Anbernic is that, while you can develop your own games and download others’ indie games for it, thanks to PortMaster, it still ends up being too cumbersome to develop for, and the PortMaster catalog itself is curated, the porting process takes time, and the end result might not be just right (I have two games in the catalog - Otto’s Tennis game has buttons swapped even though I made the port myself and tested it to work, and Wrestle Jump 2’s port isn’t great). Steam Deck, on the other hand, felt too clunky and heavy, and in a way, overkill for the kind of games I ended up playing on it. The Pocket Nova is advertised as an Android gaming handheld, and it comes with Android and a bunch of emulators preinstalled. But! You can also easily install some other operating systems, like the ArmadaOS I’m using, either on an SD card or straight to the internal drive (while still keeping a partition for Android). This makes the Nova essentially a lightweight Steam Deck, and a powerful enough device to play most of the games you’d want to play on the tiny screen. And while the screen is small, it is gorgeous and absolutely perfect for most retro games you can think of. Out of the box, the display’s vibrancy is off, but you can use this on Android, or just reduce vibrancy in SteamOS settings.

… if it weren’t for the pretty shitty ergonomics

I got the flat back one, and for some reason didn’t end up paying 5 usd more to get the bumped back shell as an extra. Maybe because it wasn’t listed in the accessories, but instead you have to search for it in the store. The device feels like it’s quality plastic, but it’s very slippery, and the trigger bumps on the back side sort of force you to grip it so that your fingers rest on the triggers. And there’s very little to grip on to when you do. It’d be better if the trigger bump was smaller and with a steeper curve, like in the original Switch Joycons.

Side view of the Nova

I already ordered the bumped back plate, and a screen protector, plus an extra button set, but it’ll take some weeks again for them to reach Finland. The extra button set is for me to switch the button order from BAYX to ABXY, as I care more for the modern retro games than playing old Nintendo games on this - my Anbernic is still great for those.

The only other annoyance I can think of is the fan noise when playing some heavier games (which I won’t be playing on this anyway), and that while there are some games that’d otherwise be an ok fit for the device, the GUI scale is too small for them to be played comfortably on a screen this small. (Like Balatro, but luckily there are mods for that.)

How about as a platform to develop for?

OMGs, yes. As a recovering mobile game developer, having a powerful, pocketable Linux device with actual physical buttons, this feels so nice to have. The desktop mode is fine for tinkering with things, and it only takes ~13 seconds to switch between the two modes. Everything is still tiny in the desktop mode, so you might want to increase UI scaling and switch to the Maliit virtual keyboard for slightly bigger keys. Currently, in the desktop mode, you can’t use the joystick to move the cursor (there is no cursor), so it’s touch input only. But you can set it up so that you can do most things straight in the game mode, and adding non-Steam games/apps has been made really easy as there’s a dedicated button for that in the Armada Store panel. I’ve only begun setting my device up so that it suits my needs, and I currently have Dolphin, the file manager, added as a non-Steam game with the joystick set as a mouse controller, and LocalSend installed for easy file sharing between any device on my WLAN and the Nova. For testing game builds, I’m sending files via SFTP (FileZilla) on my Mac - just drag’n’dropping Godot’s Linux export to the device, replacing the old build. Quick and easy enough. Launching the game via Konsole, in desktop mode, lets me see all the beautiful warnings and errors the game blesses me with, if there’s a need to see those.

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