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Unknown
Native works great without any major issues issues.
I believe the game uses borderless without an option to change it in-game, it renders a black border around the image, but it's not too bad.
Full screen is not fully full.
Base game works out of the box. Petal Crash Online does not launch without switching to Proton.
As the game is incredibly light as it is, adjusting for battery performance seems like overkill. However, if you're keen on squeezing blood from a stone, the following settings for the per-game Steam Deck profile are:
- Thermal Power (TDP) Limit: On @ 3W
- Manual GPU Clock Control: On @ 300MHz
Enjoy your 5+ hours of Petal Crash gaming on the go.
Concluding Notes
The game works perfectly out of the box with the exception of Petal Crash Online, which requires switching to Proton (7.0-4 works fine but you can never go wrong with Experimental!).
Quitting the base game is not immediately apparent since the option to quit the game is buried underneath two menus (Config & More > Game Config > Exit Game), meaning it may be best to have a button that presses ALT+F4 for you, memorize the force quit shortcut (Steam + B), or just quit via the Steam Menu if you're playing in Gaming Mode.
Otherwise, this incredibly light game works perfectly fine on the Steam Deck despite its Unsupported rating. As others have stated, you just need to put it behind Proton and it'll work as intended.
There's no ingame way to quit the game, you can still kill it using the SteamOS overlay but that doesn't work in desktop mode where it also hijacks the trackpads.
The base game works just fine on Steam Deck without any tinkering, but Petal Crash Online is a separate (AppImage) binary that refuses to load in gaming mode. Forcing Experimental to load the Windows version instead makes it run without any real issues on Steam Deck.
While the native release works just fine for me, issues launching without tinkering on a Steam Deck may render Proton the only solution.
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%
From PC→Steam Deck(thanks lindtobias!), the crossplay here worked perfectly, even while I was using the native release. Unfortunately though, my testing was done at a pretty odd hour of the day, so considering the servers are only based in the US, I wasn't able to play with random people(they just weren't on).
If launched with Proton forced on, you'll be greeted with the following error:
D3D error Could not create a Direct3D9 context. This usually means you need to update your GPU drivers.
This is what prompts usage of the advanced launch option above. Generally, the game runs fine natively for me, although that's an experience Steam Deck users aren't treated to, hence the "unsupported" rating from Valve. So long as you're behind Proton though, it runs just fine.
