Your library
- Add folders and ejGames finds each game and its right
.exe. It skips installers, redistributables and crash handlers, and it recognizes Unity, Unreal, Godot, GameMaker, RPG Maker, Ren’Py, EasyAntiCheat and BattlEye. - Local games only: what is in your folders, the loose
.exefiles you add by hand, and what you install from Downloads. If you install a new game into one of your folders, it shows up on its own. - Local profiles, console-style, with an avatar, an optional PIN, their own theme, favorites, collections (manual and smart) and hours.
- Hours and statistics: sessions, hours by day, week and hour of the day, streaks, most played and genres.
Art and data
ejGames downloads the cover, background, logo, icon, screenshots, trailers, microtrailers, description, genres, developer and rating. On square or wide tiles it composes the game’s background with its logo instead of cropping the cover. Steam needs no key. For games that are not on Steam there are two optional sources (Settings):Explore and Downloads
A repack store inside the launcher (popular, new, search, and pages with screenshots) and a built-in torrent client to download them:- You choose which languages and optional extras to download, where they are saved, and you see how much space they need.
- One download at a time, at full speed (the rest wait in the queue), an open port with UPnP, extra public trackers, and resume without checking everything again. The engine only exists while there is something to download or share.
- It pauses itself while you play (this can be turned off) and while another game is installing, it keeps the PC from sleeping, and it keeps going in the tray if you close the window.
- When it finishes, Install opens the repack’s installer. When that finishes, the game enters your library with its art and the repack is deleted (this can also be turned off).
- Each built-in theme has its own store and its own queue, dressed like its platform.
- Wishlist: save the games you want from their page and find them later in their section of the store, with their status kept up to date (downloading, installed…). It is stored on your PC, one per profile, and it is the same in every theme.
- To discover games, the whole catalog (more than 7000) with filters: up to four genres at once (perspective and setting too), sort (new, recently updated, or A to Z), a maximum download size, and “hide the ones I already have”. On a game’s page, its genres lead to the filtered catalog, and similar games appear below.
- Repacks with a hypervisor crack carry an HV tag next to the name. To play them you have to turn off Windows’ virtualization-based security for a while, so the page explains what you need, what gets turned off, the steps to play and to undo it, and the risks. The download dialog warns you before it starts.
Achievements
For games that only have the.exe, too:
- If the game ships a Steam API emulator (Goldberg, GSE and similar), ejGames reads its
achievements.ini/achievements.json. The appid comes fromsteam_appid.txtor from the emulator’s configuration. - The names, icons and rarity come from Steam, with no account and no key. Names follow the language you picked.
Guides, cheats and maps
- Steam community guides for each game, on the game page and in the overlay: with search, categories, a reader with a table of contents you can use with a controller, saved guides that can be read offline, and “Keep reading”.
- Cheats with the trainers from FLiNG, for single-player games. ejGames finds the one for the game, shows its options and the game version it covers, and only downloads it if you confirm. While you play, it opens the trainer without administrator permission, hides its window, and closes it with the game. Its options are toggled from the overlay (ejGames presses its keys) or with the trainer’s own keys.
- Interactive maps from Map Genie with their points of interest, for about 250 games: on the game page and in the overlay. During play you can pin one in a corner, semi-transparent, without taking focus away from the game.
In-game overlay
Without injecting anything into the game:- When you unlock an achievement, a notice appears with the look, position and sound of your theme’s platform: Steam’s at the bottom right, PlayStation’s at the top with its bronze, silver, gold or platinum trophy, Xbox’s at the bottom center with its points… You can pick another in Settings → Overlay, with a preview.
- Shift + Tab or the Guide button opens a panel in the style of your theme’s platform: like Steam’s Shift +
Tab, the Xbox Guide, the PlayStation control center, a Switch quick menu, a paused film (Cinema) or an arcade
pause (Retro). It includes:
- your achievements (the next easiest ones, the ones you have, and the hidden ones left);
- the game’s guides, cheats and map;
- this session’s time and the total;
- screenshots: with F12 or from the panel, an image of the game (without the overlay) is saved to
Pictures\ejGames\<game>, and the latest ones are in the panel; - notes for each game (codes, where you left off…), saved on their own; with a controller, with the on-screen keyboard;
- the music playing on the PC (Spotify, the browser…) with pause, previous and next;
- the game’s volume and the system’s;
- what the game is using: processor, graphics and memory, and the FPS (turned on in Settings → Overlay; DirectX 9–12 games, without touching the game, with a Windows permission granted once);
- your downloads, with “Keep downloading” if they paused when you started playing;
- the controller battery (and the laptop’s) and the time;
- close the game if it hangs (it asks you to confirm).
- It appears on the monitor where the game is, even if the active window is on another.
- It works in a window, in a borderless window, and in Windows 10/11’s “optimized” fullscreen. On exclusive fullscreen nothing can be drawn on top; when you close the game, a summary of what you unlocked appears.
- The overlay window only exists while something is showing, so it uses no memory during play. The panel’s data (performance, music, volume) is only read while the panel is open.
With a game open as administrator, Windows does not let other programs read the keyboard. So if Windows has the
.exe marked “Run as administrator” (many installers do this), ejGames opens it without elevating. That also
skips the UAC prompt. If a game truly needs it, turn it on in Edit game. The overlay then opens with the
controller.Themes
The house theme is Moneda: tabs along the top (Home, Library, Store and Homebrew) and three shapes taken from the logo, each with one meaning. The red disc is Play, the ring is progress (achievements, downloads) and the slot marks where you are. The platform themes (Steam, PS5, Xbox, Switch, Cinema and Retro) are switched off for now. Their code stays in the repository as an example. The theme can be tuned without code (colors, sizes, backgrounds, fonts, sounds, extra CSS), duplicated and rewritten, or you can build your own from scratch with HTML, CSS and JavaScript and live reload. Start at Build themes. Warm carbon instead of pure black, and a single color: the coin’s red,#FF3A2D.
Controller and Big Picture
Everything can be used with a controller, with spatial navigation and sounds. Button hints change on their own: ✕○△□ with a PlayStation controller, A/B/X/Y with an Xbox or Nintendo one, and keys with a keyboard. During play, the Guide button (or Select + Start for 1 second) opens the overlay panel. To type with the controller there is an on-screen keyboard.Discord
“Playing game” with its cover, and “Playing on ejGames”. It is on by default and turns off in Settings → System (or for a single profile, or a single game).Homebrew: emulators and console games
Emulators and console games are not mixed into your PC library. They have their own tab, Homebrew, next to Library (on Switch, its round button; on Retro, the HOMEBREW tab). Each theme draws it in its own style, like a store:- The catalogs in view: rows of popular, new, and one per console, with their covers, and a search for console games. Along the top, one tab per console (LB/RB with a controller) to see everything for one.
- The page for each game, with its size and region, Download (and other servers) and its progress: it
downloads, extracts (
.rartoo) and lands in your library. If you already have it, Play and Delete. - Your console games, with “Downloading” over them while they come in. X (or Delete on the page) removes them: their files, with their DLC and updates, go to the recycle bin.
- Your emulators: the ones installed from ejGames (with their version, the systems they open, how many games use them, and whether a newer version exists) and the ones you configured by hand. One click opens them, so you can set their keys, firmware or BIOS. If a system has games and no emulator, a notice appears with a button to install one. Y opens the emulator store.
emulators in the data folder, and they are set as the emulator for their systems. From there
they are updated and removed, and each system’s RetroArch core is installed. Dolphin is downloaded from its website.
ejGames does not include games, BIOS, keys or firmware: those have to come from your own consoles.
Installed emulators show up in Homebrew, so you can open them from ejGames and set their keys, firmware or BIOS.
Console games are added with a folder (ejGames recognizes the system from the extensions) or one by one with
Settings → Library → Add a game manually (an .nsp, an .iso…; if the extension fits several consoles, it
asks which). Play opens that game’s emulator.
Import ROMs (in Homebrew and in Settings → Library) adds your dumps, homebrew or demos by file or by
folder, extracting .zip and .7z. The system comes from the extension and, when needed, from the file header. You
can copy them to roms\<system> in the data folder or play them where they are. From the ROM it reads the TitleID,
version, region and serial when the format has them, and Switch, 3DS and PS Vita updates and DLC are attached to
their game. If a game has no cover on IGDB or SteamGridDB, it is looked up in libretro-thumbnails by the file name.
If the emulator chosen for a system is not there, whichever one is available is used (the one installed from
ejGames, or one on disk). Saved games for console games are the emulator’s, and they are copied the same way as PC
saves.
How long it takes, and your year
- Each game’s page shows the main story, extras and completionist hours from HowLongToBeat.
- Statistics → Your year looks back at your year in cards. From December 1 to January 15, ejGames tells you once.
Saved games
When you close a game, ejGames copies its saved games if they changed and keeps the last 10. It knows where each game stores them from the Ludusavi manifest, the Steam emulator folders and Steam Cloud. If it cannot find them, you add the folder by hand. Edit game → Saved games lists them and restores them (with the game closed).Backups
Settings → System → Backups saves your library, hours, achievements, profiles, notes, collections, settings and your own themes (and the downloaded art, if you want) into a .zip. Restoring restarts ejGames and keeps what was there before in.before-restore, inside the data folder.
With automatic backups in a OneDrive or Google Drive folder, your library follows you to another PC. There,
ejGames tells you a newer backup exists and you restore it with one click. The game paths are the original PC’s.
Add the new PC’s folders and they are recognized on their own.
Game mode, and launching from outside
- Game mode (Settings → Profile, each profile has its own): a high-performance power plan and Windows notifications silenced while you play. When you close the game, everything goes back.
- Shortcut and Add to Steam (Edit game): they open the game through ejGames (
ejgames.exe --play <id>), so the hours are counted and the overlay and Discord appear. Add to Steam needs Steam closed.
Light
- Saver mode: while you play, the interface closes and only the core stays in the tray (~5 MB). When you close the game, the window comes back on its own.
- Even without saver mode, after 30 seconds without focus WebView2 releases memory (from about 440 MB to about 160 MB).