Guide: Timespinner on Retro Handhelds (PortMaster)

The indie classic game Timespinner has recently been ported to various handheld devices, thanks to community developers and the awesome PortMaster tool. Here are the systems that can run the game as of making this guide:

Anbernic RG351P (ArkOS final, TheRA, AmberELEC, JELOS)
Anbernic RG351M (ArkOS final, TheRA, AmberELEC, JELOS)
Anbernic RG351V (ArkOS, TheRA, AmberELEC, JELOS)
Anbernic RG351MP (ArkOS, TheRA, AmberELEC, JELOS)
Anbernic RG552 (AmberELEC, JELOS)
PowKiddy RGB10 (ArkOS)
GameForce Chi (ArkOS)
RK2020 (ArkOS)
ODROID Go Advance (ArkOS)
ODROID Go Super (The RetroArena, RetroOZ)
PowKiddy RGB10 Max (The Retro Arena, RetroOZ)

Setting up this game is similar to other ports such as Shovel Knight, Undertale, and Iconoclasts. Big thanks to developer JohnnyOnFlame for getting this port up and running; please consider buying him a coffee for his hard work.

Note that you will need to have PortMaster installed and updated on your device. Here is my PortMaster guide.

Download the Timespinner Linux files (Steam or Humble Store)

Purchase the Steam version of Timespinner from their store, and then make sure you have Steam installed on your computer (and that it is signed into your account). If you’d like, you could also buy the Humble Store version of the game, which will come with a code to redeem on Steam as well. This is a great option in case you can find it cheaper there.

• On your PC, press Win+R and type: “steam://open/console” (Steam will now show console command)
• In the Steam console, type: “download_depot 368620 368621” (just copy and paste this line into your command line)
• Once that download completes, type: “download_depot 368620 368624” (just copy and paste this line into your command line)
• After several minutes, it will show you the location of the game files on your PC. Be patient, some games take longer to download than others. Navigate to that location and grab those files!

For future reference, this method can be done when trying to download the Linux version of other games via Steam. The App ID and Depot ID of the game can be found on the site steamdb.info. When you search for a game on this site you’ll immediately see the App ID. Scroll down a bit and click on Depots. Here you’ll find all the available OS versions of the game and the corresponding Depot ID. The download command in the steam console is: “download_depot <appid> <depotid> <manifest_id>” — see the infographic above for an example. The manifest ID is not always required.

If you are using a Mac, the process is the same, other than how to open up the Steam console. To do so, open the Terminal app and type the following line of code:

/Applications/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/steam_osx -console

If you are on Linux, you should be able to install the game onto your machine and then pull the game data files directly from there.

GOG-specific instructions

If you happen to already own the game via GOG.com, it’s theoretically easy to extract the Linux data files. Once you have purchased the game from GOG.com, it will show up in your library. Go into the Games section on your profile, and click the arrow at the bottom-right of your game, and select “View Downloads”. Change the system to Linux, and then click on the link under “Download Game Installers”. 

The downloaded file will be in .sh format. All you have to do is change the file extension from .sh to .gz, and then open it with 7zip. Note that I haven’t personally tested this method, but the method generally works in this way.