Importing non-lutris games installed from another Linux

When I had Linux Mint, I used Lutris to install Windows games (eg. FF13, Star Ocean 4) onto my external HDD, each game with it’s own wine prefix.

Now I connect my HDD to my Steamdeck (ie. another linux box) with a fresh install of Lutris.
How can I add my “already installed” wine-prefixed window games to new Lutris?
I tried the “locate/ previously installed Lutris game” but it can’t find anything when I point it to the wine-prefixed folders.

(don’t mind the slow reinstall if I need to do, at least what file(s) should I backup from lutris itself so I can easily migrate in future?

I’d never used it, so I had to try and unpick what it does from the source code.

You pick an root level rather than the prefix - which would be at least two directories up from where your WINE drive_c is, for example.

I tested by copying a couple of game directories to somewhere else, then removing them. After restarting Lutris, using the “import previously installed” said it imported one of them, but did not like the gog(auto) installed one.

It was also pretty misleading and didn’t come up with an “OK”, but after clicking “back” the old game it liked had been added to the library, running from the new location.

If that doesn’t work for you, check you are on lutris 5.17 first and running debug (lutris -d) shows you anything useful. Also, If you archived and transferred using tar or something, then check file permissions.