Flickstiq
Published
5 watt TDP, 40 FPS
Crystal Quest is a classic game from the 1980's that's been ported to Steam. It's designed to be controlled with an old-school trackball mouse. So on the Steam Deck it's a bit challenging to control. I settled on tweaking a mouse profile on the right trackpad. It's not as perfect as an actual trackball mouse, but it's definitely very playable. Outside of challenging controls, the game runs like a dream on the Steam Deck.
Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon works great on the Steam Deck! If you run it in Windowed Fullscreen, you can enable FSR and it will last for almost 3 hours at 60 fps. Native controller support and fun online coop.
Game settings to Low, 40 FPS cap
The initial scale of the game is small, but in the game's menu you can adjust the scale of the UI which completely resolves this problem.
This game runs well, but does not have any native controller support. You will need to create a Steam Input configuration or use a community profile. It's worth pointing out that this game has an action camera that can be toggled. This greatly enhances playing the game on the Steam Deck. The UI in the game is scalable, so you can enlarge the menus and text through the in-game settings if needed. There is an initial launcher, but once you've logged in for the first time you can enable auto-login. The launcher still pops up, but goes away on it's own and then takes you into the game. It is recommended to bind the mouse to the right trackpad for menu navigation and to move around content in your inventory. The game feels great at 40 fps which is the sweet spot for a good ratio of performance and battery life on the Deck.
TDP 6 Watts, 40 FPS Cap
Both Windowed and Fullscreen are limited to 16:9, so there are bars on the Steam Deck
This is a game worth playing on the Deck. Literally the only issue that I ran into is that the game doesn't support 16:10, even if you select 1280x800 resolution. So there will be borders when you play on the Deck. But this is the only issue. You can actually set this at 6 TDP and cap it at 40 FPS to get 4.5 hours of gaming. Very impressive for a title like this!
Capped at 7 watts and 40 fps
Neverwinter runs amazingly well on the Steam Deck. It allows you to scale the UI perfectly in the game's settings to make it look just right on the Deck's screen. The Steam Deck is fully capable of pushing 60 FPS on max settings. This will get you around 1.45 hours of battery life. If you cap the framerate to 40 FPS and the TDP to 7 watts, you can extend this to over 3 hours. I did test capping to 7 watts and having the full 60 FPS. This is again smooth, but lowers battery life to 2 hours. So 40 FPS is really needed if you're trying to maximize battery. The only downside with this game is that it doesn't natively support a controller on PC. So you will need to either create a steam input profile or use a community profile. Other than that it's flawless.
Capped Wattage at 13 watts and capped FPS at 40
This game does not offer any form of text or UI scaling and the text is on the smaller side
I have both a router and a Unifi Access Point. I can connect to servers if I use my router's Wifi signal. I cannot connect to the servers if I use my Unifi Access Point signal. This is the only game that I've tried that behaves this way. There are many reports online of strange internet related server connection issues with this game. There does not seem to be a consistent solution.
New World is playable overall. If you cap Wattage to 13 and FPS to 40, you can expect around 2.5 hours of gameplay on the Deck. I did test enabling FSR and this did not add any significant amount of battery time. There are occassional frame drops, but this appears to be true on most computers with New World. Overall it's very playable, but it also uses a considerable amount of battery.
This game does not have full controller support through all of the menus. The controller works automatically after starting a game.
This game requires a mouse/trackpad to navigate menus. Controller works in-game to control your character and works well.
This game plays best with the controller UI enabled. This has to be done manually through desktop mode.
Controller UI is not enabled by default. You need to install the game and then go into Desktop Mode on the Deck. Go to /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/304050/C:/Users/steamuser/AppData/Roaming/Trove and open Trove.cfg. Look for ForceConsoleUI = and set it to ForceConsoleUI = true. Save the file. Then when you launch the game the controller UI will be enabled.
Once setup, the game runs wonderfully and is easy to play. You do need to enable controller UI in Desktop Mode to have the best experience. The game also has a launcher that can only be navigated by mouse. So setting up the right trackpad to mouse and setting the right trackpad button to left mouse is essential. At default settings, the game will last for 3 hours and 30 minutes on the Steam Deck, which is good for a game with 3D graphics and deep mechanics.
Created a Radial Menu for menu hotkeys
Set game to fullscreen 1152x864 and enabled FSR. Capped FPS to 40 and TDP to 11 watts.
This game works well, but will require a little tweaking on Steam Deck to get the best ratio of performance vs battery life. Default settings at 60 FPS yields around 1 hour 20 minutes of battery. However this requires you to go into the game's settings and switch graphics from Quality to Performance. This results in a very noticeable hit to both graphical fidelity and resolution. It looks much better if you leave it on Quality and set the resolution to 1152x864 and then enable FSR on the Deck. If you additionally cap FPS at 40 and limit TDP to 11 watts, you'll get around 2.5 hours of battery. With these settings the game runs very smoothly and works very well.
This game has no controller support, so you'll need to customize a profile. This includes doing things like assigning the C button for crouch, X for Prone, Mouse Wheel for weapon switching, etc.
The Developer (ID) recently turned on their official servers for the game. So those are availabel in addition to unofficial community hosted servers. Many community servers use mods or unofficial maps, so be aware of that when selecting.
This is not a sit-down-and-play kind of game. It dates back to 2003 and as such, predates many of the the advancements of today. This means that it lacks controller support, you'll need to set your resolution, and you'll need to customize a steam input profile for it. Once these things are done, the game runs extremely well. The only supported widescreen resolution is low-res, but still looks good on the Deck's smaller display. It's worth noting that this is primarily an online multiplayer game, so there's not much for single player fans.
