In some cases you will get games that give you a message saying the game is not compatible with your device. So if you want to run games without sound, I recommend using a free Windows app called EarTrumpet, which lets you mute sound from Windows programs individually. I couldn’t find an option in Bluestacks for quickly turning off sound for individual games without going into the android settings menu. A more powerful CPU like an 8th-gen Intel Core i7 or Ryzen 7 might be required to play some of the more demanding games. Some games like Asphalt 9 would crash in the loading screen, changing the Render Engine to DirectX did not seem to help, although the crash could also have been due to the CPU not being powerful enough to handle such a demanding game (Ryzen 5 1400).

Other controls include adding tap spots, pinch-to-zoom, panning shots (which is particularly useful for first person shooters), and a MOBA skill pad which allows you to map directional spells. Thanks to Xpadder, whenever you press a button or thumbstick in your controller Bluestacks will interpret it as a keyboard key being pressed, allowing you to control your games in this way. If you want to use a controller, then assign the same keyboard keys to the two analog sticks (in this case we’re using the xbox 360 controller) in Xpadder and save it as a profile. If you don’t have a controller, then just hit Save and you are good to go. This time assign the arrows keys to the respective directions. Place a second D-pad in the bottom right, on top of the right thumb virtual input. Click and hold “D-pad” and drag it to the bottom left of the screen where the left virtual pad is displayed, and assign the keys WASD to the Up, Left, Down and Right directions respectively. The option we are looking for is called D-pad, and we will be adding two of them to our play area, one for each thumb input. Next, click on the “open keyboard controls UI” button at the bottom and a menu will pop-up. After launching PewPew, head over to the tutorial. You can easily configure the game to be played with your keyboard or a gamepad. Using PewPew as an example, which uses dual thumb inputs (left to control your ship, right for directional shots).

Bluestacks game crashing