Guy_Manley
Published
5w tdp limit holds 60fps. Might not be needed but I tend to do this in every game in case some aspect of it wants to go wild with power draw later on.
Some of the lore and menu text is hard to read. It's doable. Remember steam/...+L1 will magnify the game 2x and right track pad can pan that around if you really need it.
Once when exiting a cut scene the game was running but video was stuck on a single frame. Could hear my jumps and slashes though. Force quit and it has not happened since.
Cloud saves and cut scenes seem to work fine, saw some reports that these were broken before. Used the default proton 8 didn't force any other version. I might be overly sensitive to frame pacing issues but disabling FPS limit and allowing tearing in the quick access menu then relying on in game vsync seems to have the smoothest scrolling for me. 2D platformers really make and fps issue noticable.
40hz, 40fps, 5 watt TDP.
Played for a few hours. Both on PC and deck. I'm not noticing any issues or differences between native windows and playing on steam deck. Set 40hz and 5 watt TDP just for max battery life. You could play easily at 60fps locked though.
Tried the GOG linux and Windows version with proton 7 and GE 7-26. Both will start a game, but when you load a saved game the game crashes to desktop or game mode menu.
I connected to the first co op lobby that was populated. Might have been too much. 200ms ping to the host and it felt soupy. But it did work, 16 Doom guys speed running Doom 1 episode one.
I was worried when Valve claimed this was unsupported, but I did not run into any trouble in my short period testing it out. I did not try every feature but single player and multiplayer worked.
This is 2 games, a 2D shump Death Smiles 1 and 3D shump Death Smiles 2. Death Smiles 2 crashes when you go to start a run. Works in menus up until then.
No issues is Death Smiles 1 with zero tweaks.
A DirectX error: "Debug version has been selected for DirectX run time. Application may not run on intended performance." Touch screen or Steam+Right Track pad to click OK. No issues after that. If you map a back button to Enter you can pass this without touching the screen.
Unless you choose Full Screen, 1280x800 will draw some of the game off screen. Full Screen uses the entire 800 Y axis of the screen. This is a 3:4, tate mode, vertical shump so the all the vertical realestate is needed.
It holds 60fps locked. The game pulls 12-14 watts even at 320x200. So might as well max out the settings. That's ~3 hours of battery life. It's an arcade shump so a full playthough could been done more than once on a full charge.
Well the proton/windows version ran perfectly on steam deck. This also allows seemsless cloud save sharing with my Windows PC.
Easily the most non tinker game I've tried yet. Just play. Doesn't even require limiting TDP as the game is not greedy with CPU power draw like some other indie 2D game have been in my experience.
A bit heavy on the GPU but you can play this on deck from my begginging of the game experience.
No AA, Native 800p, Limited to 30 FPS.
The outside area with rain effects was not able to hold 90fps, capped to 45 worked. But then inside with all the dynamic shadows and flash light lighting hit the deck even hard. Limited to 30fps after that. 40fps was not giving me the battery life I'd want for a slow Survival Horror game.
I did nothing to tweak and it just worked. Would probably be Verified/Platinum if it were a more popular title. i.e. more reports.
Pause menu Text was dirtorted, it's only function it to return to title to quit. So it doesn't affect gameplay at all. Worth mentioning though.
Installs, plays, light weight and free. Easy to reccomend if you like puzzle platformers.
FPS capped to 45. Graphics lowered to High preset.
The only nit picky thing I can find is that the game turns in game vsync on at every boot. But that's all.
60 FPS limit
It's a game engine from the year 2000. Many bugs exist. But this is kind of the point with this release.
The game now ships with dgVooDoo installed which helps modern hardware compatibility on Windows but this mod does not get loaded on the Steam Deck. Lucky it does not see to need it and loads the DirectX 7?... via normal proton/wine methods. Switch to ProtonGE to get the cut scenes working and that is all you need.
For battery conservation I set the deck to 60fps limit. The game basicly runs entirely off the CPU so not running at 90fps limits the power useage of the CPU quite a bit.
Low shadows, low LOD, 40hz refresh rate.
Dialog font is rather small. Not as much of an issue, as every NPC is voiced in this game. But thought I'd note it here.
The game will hover in the high 40s low 50s for FPS. Turning on dynamic resolution scaling helps but isn't perfect and this introduces frame pacing issues when the resolution changes the resolution. Plus, you know, make it look like a blurry Nintendo Switch game, so I'd rather not use it. Suprisingly the game doesn't feel bad even not meeting 60fps. Not sure what tricks the dev pulled but it's playable and doesn't even seem to stutter sub 60fps even though I know Wayland/Gamescope is forcing v-sync on.
Saw a recent report about capping the frame rate slowing the game down. This is not the case.
The game in it's 1.0 version would speed up if ran higher than 60fps but that isn't even possible in the current patch so this isn't a concern on steam deck. I tested by timing a run from wall to the sea in the fishing village. 60hz/60fps all low settings and dynamic-res enabled and 40hz/40fps, the time was 14 seconds in either refresh rate. If you limit TDP to an extreme that the GPU can't render frames as fast as your refresh rate, that will slow game speed. Set 4 watts and yes 20fps is slow motion. But capping the game to 30fps in 60hz or 40fps in 40hz will not slow the game speed down.
The game is actually really well optimized as far as battery life is concerned. Even with the high setting preset it pulled about 15 watts from the battery and often less. With low shadows, low LOD, everything else default, and at 40hz/fps it was about 12 watts usually. That's 3 hours on a full charge.
RS.ini added line "Vsync=0" no clue if this did anything or not though. Probably skip this.
Runs at a locked 60 on Steam Deck via the default proton Valve selected, no issues. On windows via nvidia GPU I'm getting 59fps fullscreen and 60 only in windowed mode. So I think this is a W for Linux Gaming.
30 FPS limit, 12 watt tdp 1200 Mhz clock on GPU.
For some reason Stem cloud saves are not available. Seems like an oversight on an otherwise good PC port.
Game will run at sub 30fps at times. Even on low graphics.
Maybe there will be a proton fix later on. But at launch FSR1 and TSR are the only upscaling solutions in the options. Dynamic resolution scaling is missing too. On my windows PC I have every upscaler available. The deck should support Xess and FSR 3. So I am not sure why they are not available. As well HDR support is missing.
Devs did not turn on cloud saves, so 3rd party syncing software will be needed if you plan to play on multiple devices.
I ended up not using an upscaler and going into the advance graphics, Setting everything to meduim, low shadows, no ssao, and the resolution scale to 66%. The game looks very good even at low settings on the small screen.
You no longer need to add SteamDeck=0 %command% to the launch options to expose graphics options like in the demo.
I turned AA and Shadows down to taste for maximizing battery life. 40hz for the same reason. In game vsync off as it seems to bug out the gamescope vsync. But you could do 50 locked or 60 with some dips in the overworld map.
2nd time playing on Deck, the community controller profile resolved the broken QTE glyphs in game.
Oddly, I needed to manually set a proton version, otherwise the game was listed as "Windows" and wouldn't install. (Install button greyed out) Since someone mentioned arcade games working better with GE, I used the latest GE version that was on my deck. Hang On run just fine as did the QTE2 machine, even set new high scores.
Cryo Utilities 2.0 default tweaks to OS
Shadows and Visual affects to low. GPU pinned to 1100mhz and TDP of 9, also parked 4 cores via power tools plugin. This might not be needed for most people.
Subtitles and loading screen tips are a little hard to read, but not game breaking.
I limited cut scenes to 30FPS, they won't do better then this and fall short of 30 often with my graphic settings
40hz refresh rate. Mango hud command line FPS limit for better input latency. MANGOHUD_CONFIG=fps_limit=40, no_display mangohud %command% 720p, Quality FSR in game setting. Vysnc off, no FPS limit in game, 30 for cut scenes, High AA or FSR looks worse, uses TAA at this setting so not as performance impacting, Shadows low, Post Processing meduim, Textures high, the game doesn't fill RAM and VRAM, Visual affects low.
Pulls 16 watts in demanding scenes less and non combat exploration. The first levels are the most intense, lots of effects and water. Much better after this area.
No steam cloud saving, added /steamapps/compatdata/1399080/pfx/drive_c/Users//Documents/my games/DFC/Steam/ to my Syncthing folders to sync saves with my Windows PC.
Limit 40fps/hz, in game FSR Ultra Quality, High TAA and Medium for all other settings. Holds a rock solid 40fps and 10 watts in the hub area with 11-12 in cut scene and battle. Around 4 hours on a full charge, satisfies my SRPG mobile needs.
No Steam cloud saves: Use Syncthing to keep progress across multiple PCs.
Saves located in Steam-folder/steamapps/compatdata/1399080/pfx/drive_c/Users/User Name/Documents/my games/DFC/Steam/steam ID
Lack of native steam cloud saves is a disappointment. But easy enough to work around via Syncthing to keep my progress across Desktop and Steam Deck. The game itself is perfect on Deck and anyone that would enjoy this game would enjoy it on the Steam Deck as well.
40hz, low shadows, high AA, medium everything else. TDP limited until 40hz was always stable.
Just an update to my previous review. Hopped back on this title and seems since Oct 22 it's had steam cloud saves that it lacked at launch, no patch notes or announcment was made. So yeah bascially a 'Verified' game. Install and play. Enjoy!
GoG Version worked via Heroic. Finished the first day. Saved reloaded. Audio tracks changed with no hitching.
Limit to 40hz, 40 FPS.
The game will drop to 19 fps frequently based on enemies and objects on screen even at medium/low settings
Not an optimized game but it will absolutly run on Steam Deck. Just don't go to far from a charger. Runs out of the box. FPS is all over the place and pulls 22 watts even at medium settings. Still if you want to kill some time and waifus on the go, this will do the trick.
