# Smart Play starts figuring out unfamiliar games

> Reading game files before choosing a runtime.

Canonical page: https://pyrosoft.pro/blog/smart-play-starts-figuring-out-unfamiliar-games

Live development journal; no publication date.
Work period: 2026-09-29 to 2026-09-30
Updated: 2026-10-20

Up to this point, a good game profile did a lot of the work for Bourbon. The next step was helping when a game didn't have one. With 26.9.29.5, the Smart Play analyzer started reading the installed files and using that information to choose a setup to try.

It looked for the engine, graphics requirements and likely game executable without running the program during analysis. That's useful with games that include a launcher, prerequisite installer and several other executables. We want to start the actual game with an appropriate route, rather than guessing from the first EXE in the folder.

The release notes record tests including RuneScape: Dragonwilds on D3DMetal and Deep Rock Galactic through its game executable, avoiding a prerequisite installer that hung under Wine. They also list titles across several engines. That testing took place on an M5 MacBook Air; online play and a wider hardware matrix were still separate work.

Launch reporting improved alongside the analyzer. Bourbon waited for Steam to be ready, checked whether it received the request, and handled launchers that needed a sign-in. A fatal error window stopped counting as a successful game. Cancelling monitoring after a game started left the game and Steam running.

The following day's update fixed a Unity window offset with fullscreen defaults while preserving a user's windowed choice. It also corrected save synchronization through linked library paths; that fix had automated coverage, with a real external-library trial still outstanding in that record.

For me, this is where the analyzer became useful as a starting point for compatibility work. It could make a reasoned choice and recover from some failures. We still had to verify what the game actually did after launch.