cns00: i am thinking of installing a gog game on laptop aaa and then copying the game folder and transferring it to my other laptop bbb. bbb already has the prerequisite programs installed
will the game run on bbb if i launch it from the .exe file in the game folder?
i did some tests on aaa. i changed the name of the game folder and then i ran the game's .exe file and the game worked
nightcraw1er.488: What you are talking about is “is game x portable”. In a lot of situations no. There are lots of links to registry, other dependancies, and folders. Sometimes it is possible with tweaking. This being said, unless you have a very very specific reason to do this I would not recommend. You could be creating issues later n that are hard to track down. In all cases using the offline installers will be better and more robust.
Just to complete the answer above, most games aren't portable in the sense that you can use them on a pen drive and keep your saves there. But there's many games (mostly indies) that can be transfered after installing by copying the folder, Shadow Tactics is one tried exemple on GOG and most DRM-free I've bother to download from Epic freebies, like Batman games works too.
I would say if the game is not high production value (like AAA) chances are it will work and will create a new save and config files on a new machine.
Most games save on "documents" folder, configuration on "appdata" and sometimes engine data is stored in "appdata".