The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has been ported, patched and modded in nearly every way imaginable over the past two decades, and now it can be played like a Nintendo DS game. A fan project called OpenMW-DS splits Bethesda's classic RPG across two screens, putting the game on top and turning the bottom screen into a live HUD, inventory, spellbook, journal and map.
The project is made by developer Josh Daniels and is built for the AYN Thor, a dual-screen Android handheld. Version 1.0.0 arrived at the end of August, and the project has since been updated to version 1.2.1. It is free on itch.io and GitHub.
Five Tabs On The Bottom Screen
The bottom screen is split into five tabs that update live as you play:
- HUD: a player-centered minimap of the current cell, surrounded by health, magicka and fatigue, active effects, your equipped weapon and spell, a sneak indicator, your tracked quest and the health of whatever you are fighting.
- Inventory: the full item list, with tap to equip, use or read, plus sorting by category and per-item weight, condition and enchantment charge.
- Spells: spells, powers, scrolls and enchanted items, showing magicka cost, school and casting chance.
- Stats: the full character sheet, where every row opens a detail popup.
- Journal: quests, topics and entries, with options to hide finished quests, follow one on the HUD and write your own notes dated with the in-game calendar.
The HUD also has favorite slots for gear and magic, so players can swap weapons and spells without opening a menu at all.
Menus That Use Both Screens
The more ambitious part of the project is what it does with Morrowind's own menus. Fifteen of them can be moved to the bottom screen, including conversation, looting, bartering, persuasion, repair, travel, level up, spell buying, training, spellmaking, enchanting, alchemy, the map, resting and crime alerts. Each menu can be switched individually, and presets let players move everything at once or put it all back.
Several of these use both screens together. Bartering and looting put the two inventories on separate displays, while alchemy, enchanting and spellmaking keep a live readout on top as you work below. The map is split as well, with the world map on the top screen and the local map on the bottom by default, both with their own pinch zoom. Players can also drop notes anywhere on the world map.
Daniels says the game's rules are untouched. According to the project's documentation, every DS screen passes its actions back to the engine, so alchemy rolls, enchanting checks, spellmaking costs and level-up health gains all work exactly as they do in the original, quirks included.
Built On OpenMW
OpenMW-DS is a fork of Alpha3, a multi-engine Android launcher, which is itself a fork of openmw-android. Both build on OpenMW, the long-running open-source recreation of the Morrowind engine. Like OpenMW, the project does not include any of the game itself. Players need to own Morrowind, which is available on Steam and GOG, and point the launcher at their game folder.
That launcher also handles mod load order and mod folders, and the project supports Tamriel Rebuilt, the massive fan effort to add the rest of the Morrowind mainland to the game. Version 1.0.0 landed right around the release of Tamriel Rebuilt's Poison Song update, which gave players with a Thor a fresh reason to dive back in.
Other touches include full controller navigation, an on-screen keyboard, screen dimming that follows the game's lighting so the bottom display does not glare in a dark cave, and the MysticCards font, OpenMW's open-source take on Morrowind's typeface.
Other Devices And How It Was Made
The Thor is the main target, but the launcher also includes an experimental mode for Retroid handhelds with the dual-screen add-on and a custom mode for other dual-screen devices. Single-screen devices can still run the launcher with the game's original menus.
Daniels has been open about how the project was built. The code was written with Claude, Anthropic's AI model, under his direction, a detail that may matter to some players given the ongoing debate around AI tools in game development and modding. OpenMW-DS is an unofficial fan project and is not affiliated with Bethesda.
Projects like this show how much an older PC game can gain from a second display. Morrowind was never designed for it, but its menu-heavy interface and huge journal fit the format surprisingly well.
Would you rather play Morrowind on a dual-screen handheld like this, or stick with the classic single-screen PC experience?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.