How to run Pharaoh: A New Era on macOS (2024)
Apple Silicon (M1/M2), CrossOver, and D3DMetal (GPTK) has made a lot of Windows games like Pharoah: A New Era playable on Macs. Here’s how I installed and played Pharaoh: A New Era on macOS running on a M2 Max Mac Studio.
Yes. It runs really well.
What’s the trick?!
CodeWeaver’s Crossover is the secret sauce that translates Windows applications, read games, to run on your Mac. This usually means it runs faster when compared to Windows emulation on platforms like Parallels. With version 23.5 and above, CrossOver includes the D3DMetal implementation so you don’t need to mess around with GPTK to get it working.
This will cost you about $59.95 usually. Sometimes there are promos like Black Friday, etc so you might be able to snag it cheaper. Once you purchased and installed CrossOver, the fun begins.
How to install Pharaoh: A New Era on macOS using CrossOver
I personally prefer to get my games from GOG‘s platform as I’m able to play it offline. This is especially helpful to get games working on emulators like CrossOver! But this will also work if you purchase your games from Steam as you would simply install the game via Steam in CrossOver.
Anyways. If you have not bought Pharaoh: A New Era yet, I would recommend getting it from GOG.com here. GOG allows you to download the offline installer and the offline installer and thus removing the dependancy on Steam or Epic Games Store launcher to get it working. One less problem to worry about! Pharaoh: A New Era from GOG comes in a 2.1GB download in total only 2 files.
Once you have all the installer files downloaded, it’s time to start up CrossOver and install Pharaoh: A New Era on your Mac. The game is not listed in CrossOver, so you need to install it manually. But don’t worry as it is a simple process. While the game should work on the latest stable version CrossOver 24.05, I actually used the preview version 20241028.
First, click to install an unlisted application.
Then, point CrossOver to the Pharaoh: A New Era installer that you just downloaded.
Next, select Windows 11 bottle and name it “Pharaoh: A New Era” or any other name you like. It must be in a Windows 11 Bottle. I’ve tried others and it did not work.
After that, click on Install and the installer will start. Then it’s just a matter or waiting for the installer to complete.
(Maybe) Required settings on CrossOver for Pharaoh: A New Era on macOS
First up, you should enable D3DMetal support on the bottle. I also recommend turning on MSync settings.
Next, go into the Wine Configuration and add mf to the override. There is an intro video in the game that uses the Windows Media Foundation library.
Now you can start the game up! BUT you will first face a black screen as the Intro video does not seem to play through CrossOver. However, you should be able to hear the background music of the Intro video. The game does not allow you to skip the video the first time the game runs, so you just have to be patient and let it play out. Soon you will reach the menu of the game.
Eventually, the menu does appear.
Is Pharaoh: A New Era playable on macOS?!
The short answer is yes in my case. Check out the video below and see how I was able to get constant 60 FPS @ 1440p on my Mac Studio with a 38-cores GPU M2 Max.
If this post has been useful, support me by buying me a latte or two 🙂
