Running frotz, glulxe, and frobtads on Android using KBOX2

Hey folks, I was just getting my Android phone set up to play Hadean Lands and I found myself craving a terminal-based experience like I’m used to using.

So a little searching uncovered KBOX2, which is a small chrooted Linux-like environment that can run on non-rooted Andoid phones.

I don’t recommend this approach for people who are looking for a simple native Android app to run your games but here’s what I did on my Nexus 5 to get glulxe working in order to play Hadean Lands:

  1. Installed the Terminal Emulator for Android

  2. Installed OneBox Package Manager and ran it once, hitting “Next” to install the command line tools.

  3. Once I have installed that, I have an app in my drawer called OneBox Shell. When I open that, it opens a terminal emulator and automatically starts the KBOX2 environment.

  4. Using my phone’s web browser, I went to kevinboone.net/kbox2_downloads.html and downloaded the glulxe package.

  5. In my kbox environment I installed the glulxe package with the command dpkg -i /sdcard/Download/glulxe_0.5.1_kbox.deb

  6. Once glulxe was installed, I could use it to run Hadean Lands with ‘glulxe /sdcard/Download/HadeanLands.gblorb’

Anywho, YMMV and all that, but I wound up with a familiar interpreter interface, which is what I was after.