What Is ScummVM?

ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical adventure and role-playing games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed! ScummVM is a complete rewrite of these games' executables and is not an emulator.

ScummVM supports a huge library of adventures with over 250 games in total. It supports many classics published by legendary studios like LucasArts, Sierra On-Line, Revolution Software, Cyan, Inc. and Westwood Studios. Next to ground-breaking titles like the Monkey Island series, Broken Sword, Myst, Blade Runner and countless other games you will find some really obscure adventures and truly hidden gems to explore.

You can find a full list with details on which games are supported and how well on the compatibility page. ScummVM is continually improving, so check back often. Among the systems on which you can play those games are Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, PS Vita, Switch, Dreamcast, AmigaOS, Atari/FreeMiNT, RISC OS, Haiku, PSP, PS3, Maemo, GCW Zero and many more...

Our forum and Discord Server, are open for comments and suggestions. Please read our FAQ before posting.

You may support the project by expressing your excitement in the form of a donation via PayPal although we value code contributions considerably more.

Latest Developments
Feb 16, 2022: "Back For More?"
Posted by Die4Ever

It’s been 13 years since The 7th Guest was added to ScummVM with the Groovie 1 engine, and now we’ve finally added support for the Groovie 2 engine with all 4 games supported: The 11th Hour, Clandestiny, Tender Loving Care (CD-ROM edition), and Uncle Henry's Playhouse.

If the minigames vs Stauf are too difficult for you, then there’s also a new option for Easier AI which is available for all games (except Tender Loving Care, which doesn’t feature puzzles against an AI). The Easier AI option is also now available in the original Groovie engine for The 7th Guest, as well as other improvements such as right-click to fast forward.

Grab your thinking caps and a daily build to try it out. You can also check out the demos here. As always, please submit the bug reports to our issue tracker.

Feb 1, 2022: Can you survive six of your deadliest foes? 🕷
Posted by gu3

Marvel Comics Spider-Man: The Sinister Six, the first supported game of the Hypno engine, is ready for public testing!

Get ready to defeat Spidey’s arch-enemies: Dr. Octopus, Hobgoblin, Shocker, Chameleon, Mysterio, and Vulture! 🕷

Released by Brooklyn Multimedia in 1996, this action-adventure game lets you play as Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man. There are six different story lines and outcomes based on how you play and four difficulty settings.

ScummVM currently supports the English and Spanish releases out of the box. Support for the Hebrew release will be available soon. A German release also exists, but we need help finding a copy before it can be supported. Please contact us if you have one.

To play any of these supported releases, you will need a daily development build. As always, please submit your bug reports to our issue tracker.

Jan 2, 2022: New year with Californium(*)
Posted by sev, rootfather

Several months have passed since our monumental 2.5.0 release, and now the ScummVM Team is thrilled to announce the release of the bugfix release, 2.5.1 codenamed “Californium”*.

The most notable changes are: we added scalers in OpenGL mode (those AdvMame, HQ etc things), fixed several bugs in The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes, made the sound for Sam & Max more accurate, improved graphics for some Macintosh SCUMM games, implemented more renderers for The Longest Journey, made many enhancements to Little Big Adventure and we fixed the dreaded bug on World of Xeen startup.

The comprehensive list of changes can be found here.

You may find the download at the usual place on our downloads page. Due to a slight delay regarding the release for macOS, the auto-updater will be released within the next couple of days – stay tuned!

Enjoy ScummVM in 2022!

* The average atomic mass of Californium (atomic number 98) is 251.

Nov 18, 2021: Seek the truth
Posted by alxpnv

After more than 10 years of development, the ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for the psychological-horror adventure game Sanitarium.

Grab your CD version or a digital release and immerse yourself in a story full of nightmares and mysteries.

If you don't own the game we have a demo available.

You will need the latest daily build. As always, please submit the bug reports to our issue tracker.

Oct 9, 2021: Twenty years ago today...
Posted by sev

Twenty years ago today, on Tue Oct 9 16:30:12 2001, Ludvig Strigeus pushed the initial revision of the ScummVM code, which was version 0.0.1 of the project. Time flew quickly and, fast-forward to the present day, we are proudly releasing ScummVM 2.5.0 “Twenty years ago today…”

The list of changes is tremendous.

First of all, this is the first release that supports 2.5D games (almost 3D), thanks to the merger with ResidualVM. With this release we announce support for Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey and Myst 3: Exile. This is why we jumped straight to 2.5 in our versioning. Please note that only desktop platforms currently support these games and other platforms may or may not gain the support later depending on their capabilities.

In addition to these 3 games and engines, we officially support 10 more new engines and subengines that add compatibility with the following games:

  • Little Big Adventure
  • Red Comrades 1: Save the Galaxy
  • Red Comrades 2: For the Great Justice
  • Transylvania
  • Crimson Crown
  • OO-Topos
  • Glulx interactive fiction games
  • Private Eye
  • AGS Games versions 2.5+
  • Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy
  • The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time
  • Crusader: No Remorse
  • L-ZONE
  • Spaceship Warlock

We love localized game releases and multiple platform versions, thus with this release, we enhanced the support for Lure of the Temptress Konami release, Blue Force Spanish, Ringworld Spanish, Amazon: Guardians of Eden Spanish, Mystery House French, Russian translations of Sierra AGI games, Elvira 1 Japanese PC-98, Bargon Attack Russian, Woodruff Russian, Eye of the Beholder Japanese Sega-CD, Legend of Kyrandia Hebrew, Legend of Kyrandia 2 Hebrew, Legend of Kyrandia 3 Simplified Chinese, Inherit the Earth PC-98 Japanese, Gabriel Knight 1 Macintosh, Xeen Russian to name but a few. Notably, Macintosh b/w versions of Loom and Indy 3 are now also supported.

Besides the new games and game versions, ScummVM 2.5.0 brings many notable improvements and new features. We have completed a major rework of the GUI: We now support Unicode characters everywhere. The GUI also adapts to high resolutions used in HiDPI screens. The Nintendo DS port has been significantly rewritten. We added GOG and Steam achievements to a large number of Wintermute games and enabled KeyMapper in more games. Thanks to the work of one of our GSoC students, we have now added an option for text-to-speech to the games Sfinx, Soltys and The Griffon Legend.

You may find all of this goodness available to a number of platforms on our downloads page, or let the autoupdater kick in on Macintosh and Windows.

We wish you great adventuring, happy puzzle-solving and exciting journeys to RPG worlds, and hope to see you around in the coming years.

And by the way, GOG.com is running a special promo tied to the release and our anniversary, where you can buy many ScummVM-supported games at a discount.