List of Apple Arcade games which work on non-metal Macs

[Heindijs]

I decided to test out and try to document which Apple Arcade games work on early Intel, non-Metal Macs running Catalina unofficially.
For some reason, not all games are made for the Metal API, which means that some work surprisingly well. Some also used to work, but no longer do (Crossy Road Castle for example)
I've tested all of these games on an early 2009 iMac with a GeForce GT130 with 512mb vram. So your mileage may vary.

I am only using Catalina, so games which require Big Sur are not included

Games confirmed working:

• Cat Quest II (includes graphical settings to adjust, no other issues)
• MarbleItUp (includes graphical settings to adjust, recommend lowering the resolution)
• Mini Motorways (up to update 1.5, after that it doesn't work anymore)
• Sonic Racing (no issues)

Games that don't work or have major issues:

• Crossy Castle (used to work, now just a blank screen)
• Frogger TT (blank screen)
• Lifeslide (used to work until the most recent update, blank screen)
• Rayman Mini (crashes)
• RoundGuard (blank screen)
• Tint (blank screen)
• Word Laces (blank screen)

More to be added, more confirmation would be appreciated

 

[philgxxd]

I have BigSur running on a white 2010 MacBook7,1 and could run LegoBrawl until a recent update just shows a black screen.
I have also begun to try every game of AppleArcade but have to get back home as I can’t remember the names. I will add to this later.
Interesting to know which games can be run on Catalina as I will try on another 7,1 to see what OS runs more smooth because neither of my two 7,1 has a SSD in it yet.

 

[philgxxd]

These are the games I have running on my 7,1 MacBook on BigSur from Apple Arcade.

1. Sasquatch
2. Takeshi and Hiroshi
3. The Lullaby of Life
4. The Last Campfire (unfortunately even on low graphics settings a slide show...)

 

[Wowfunhappy]

I actually have Sayonara Wild Hearts working all the way back on Mavericks, with a small patch to the UnityPlayer library. https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...ty-games-on-os-x-10-9-mavericks/414689#414689

 

[theMarble]

MIU Mayhem should work aswell. Torque runs well on older Macs.

 

[Heindijs]

An update came out today for Mini Motorways which seems to have made the game depend on Metal. It used to work really well on most older Macs but now it just displays a garbled image

I do own the game on Steam as well so I'll test it out on there when I get the chance.

 

[philgxxd]

Because of the low performance of the integrated 320m graphics chip in the Macbook7,1 with some Apple Arcade games I wanted to try how far I get with the 330m in my 15” MBP6,2.
I updated to the lastest 11.6.2 of BigSur and couldn’t get to work any of the previous ones from my MB7,1.
Some games made some full screen switching but always stayed black. Sometimes I could listen the music playing from the start screen.

I tried to force the use of the integrated Intel graphics chip and the Nvidia 330m while starting up again the games but that changed nothing.
I looked into the log in the console but didn’t get much clues out of it.
Something about “Unknown CGXDisplayDevice” that led to try switching between color profiles in the screen preference but that changed nothing.

I then began to try out more games and could get to run “Shinsekai Into the Depths” and “Sayonara Wild Hearts” so I will start to try out more games.

Any ideas what I can try to get to the root cause of that problem?