n01
Published
Fails to start using either Steam Linux Runtime 1.0 or 3.0
Default Proton Version (9.0-4) Flawless OOB; Valve 'Unsupported' Deck Compatibility Rating Seems Outdated
Bound rear grips to suit my playstyle. Wasn't necessary to play and I made no other changes
Set refresh rate + frame limit to 45
Experience was superior to many actual 'deck verified' games. I played multiple playthroughs of the entire game on deck using the proton version selected by default (9.0-4), and no other proton-related configuration. Medium graphics settings yielded 50-60 fps in most areas (on my LCD steam deck), and setting frame limit+refresh rate to 45 resulted in 2-3 hours of battery life. Enabled back grip buttons just to suit my taste; the recommended and default Gamepad With Joystick Trackpad layout was perfectly sufficient to play. Encountered absolutely no problems playing through the game: seems likely the 'unsupported' deck compatibility rating was because of problems with older proton versions and just hasn't been updated for many years.
Poor experience with native version on deck; it runs, but expect to be restarting the game a lot
Had to manually intervene and set the "web browser" control template after starting the game. Deck Compatibility notes claim 'all functionality is accessible when using the default controller configuration,' but as far as I can tell there is no default controller configuration set by either Valve or the developer; when I started the game, my deck just loaded the alphabetically first community controller layout for a steam controller (not even a steam deck!), which had wonky unintuitive controls and wasn't sufficient for me to play the game.
default is quite small. Setting zoom level to 130% (the maximum) improves readability; it's still small but manageable for me
Attempting to toggle fullscreen on in the game settings always causes the image to freeze, necessitating killing the game from the Steam menu
Clicking and dragging an item to another tab in the bank reliably breaks the game in one of three ways: I am left looking at either a black screen, a black screen with a white box on it, or a frozen image of the screen right when I dropped the item in the new tab. In any of these cases I cannot get the game to respond or recover input without killing it and restarting it. Besides this, sometimes when playing, I become spontaneously unable to interact with the game window, either by using the touchscreen or with the trackpad mouse I have configured; in these cases I can still see the game window updating so I know it's still running, but it's as though it has lost context, and I can't interact with it. Have not found a way to restore control without killing and reopening the game from the Steam menu.
Sometimes the game starts up near-immediately, but other times (seemingly arbitrarily) it takes prohibitively long to start (30-45 seconds), and sometimes it seems to get stuck and doesn't start at all (even after waiting several minutes or longer)
Played with the native Linux version 'selected by Valve testing' as default on the deck. As mentioned above, manual intervention was needed to have a usable control scheme, and even there are many ways to either freeze the game or lose input, all necessitating a forced restart. Performance and battery life are great while the game is actually running. Fortunately the game automatically saves (locally) every 10 seconds, so I've never lost save data in any of the cases where I had to force-exit the game, but it doesn't make for a great experience or meet the bar for something I'd call 'playable'
swapped up and down dpad buttons (so they behaved as expected)
dpad up and down were swapped originally
Has an excellent native version which I found preferable to the default proton 9.0-4 "selected by valve testing."
I found both the native and proton versions perfectly click-playable, but I found the native version preferable as I could set true 16:10 resolutions and use the full screen of the deck without letterboxing (simply change window mode to fullscreen in the in-game settings). This can't be done with the proton version (even upon forcing 1280x800 in steam settings, and regardless of what in-game settings are chosen, the proton version always letterboxes). Many of the backgrounds in the game still letterbox to 16:9 anyways, but other parts of the interface (dialogue, 'hud,' main menu) do use the full screen at 16:10, so it provided some advantage for me. The native version also seemed to my eyes to have slightly improved image scaling/text antialiasing behavior, though this is difficult to compare precisely.
The only blemish on the native version is that the dpad up and down buttons are reversed for some reason (but behave correctly on the proton version). This was easily solved by swapping them using steam input.
Installed just the Courier font, which causes the font to match what is seen when playing on Windows. Far from necessary, as without this the game uses a default font that is still perfectly readable, and just very slightly cut off in some places; I played a significant portion of the game without this tweak before I even noticed anything was off. Tweak can be easily done with no prior experience using protontricks by performing the following steps:
select desired proton version for game in Steam -> switch to desktop mode -> open discover (software center) -> search for and install protontricks -> run protontricks -> choose Tokyo Dark and hit OK -> wait patiently -> hit OK to dismiss warning -> wait patiently -> choose "Select the default wineprefix" and hit OK -> choose "Install a font" and hit OK -> check only the box for "courier" and hit OK -> wait patiently until window pops back up -> hit Cancel repeatedly to exit protontricks
In-game text is quite small; can choose "Larger" for conversation text from in-game menu, which makes it bigger, but still small
Sometimes after starting the game the mouse cursor isn't visible. Easily fixed by double-pressing either the Steam or ... button to bring up any part of the Steam interface and then close it (which makes the cursor visible again).
Despite the unsupported Deck Compatibility rating, simply setting the Proton version to 5.13-6, knowing the mouse cursor trick (double-press Steam or ... after starting the game) delivers a quality experience. Other tweaks (e.g. using protontweaks to install the Courier font, see above) further improve the experience slightly. I was able to play through the game without issue both before and after the text tweak.
I did find that the game interacts strangely with Proton versions other than 5.13-6; in general, some lower versions work, while any higher version generally loads the game (I could hear the game and cursor sounds) but displays only a black screen. For reference, these were my exact findings with each Proton version currently available in the Steam client, using fully up to date, unmodified, Stable channel SteamOS and client (SteamOS 3.6.24-20250313.1, Kernel 6.5.0-valve23-1-neptune-65-g385b5207ae2):
| Proton Version | Result |
|---|---|
| 5.13-6 | works, stable, played entire game |
| Proton Experimental | loads but no visuals; black screen |
| Proton Hotfix | loads but no visuals; black screen |
| 10.0-1 (beta) | loads but no visuals; black screen |
| 9.0-4 (default selected by Valve testing) | loads but no visuals; black screen |
| 8.0-5 | loads but no visuals; black screen |
| 7.0-6 | loads but no visuals; black screen |
| 6.3-8 | loads but no visuals; black screen |
| 5.0-10 | doesn't start, perpetually stuck at "Starting launch..." |
| 4.11-13 | works usually, sometimes crashes at main menu |
| 4.2-9 | works usually, sometimes crashes at main menu |
| 3.16-9 | works usually, sometimes crashes at main menu |
| 3.7-8 | runs, but no in-game text is visible |
