GadgetGamer
Published
Full disclosure: I played the DRM-free version from IndieGala, but I added it to Steam as a non-Steam game and it worked automatically with SteamPlay. The game played perfectly.
Worked fine after hanging on the initial run
The first time I started the game, it just sat in the background without showing any interface. I killed the process, ran it again, and this time it showed the "Play or Configure" question and everything worked fine.
I played the game in one sitting, so I don't know if it was a one-off or would have had intermittent problems.
I used to have terrible slow-downs whenever weather effects happened, but Proton 3.16-4 fixed this so now the game runs perfectly.
I had the slowdown that others reported happen infrequently; not enough to ruin the game for me. I tend to play this in quick burst, so it is extremely rare to happen to me. I didn't have the other problem of switching between fullscreen and windowed mode; it works perfectly.
Played at 60fps on full settings in both fullscreen & windowed modes. Worked perfectly without tweaks.
Ran without tweaks and no crashes, but also no sound effects or voices. The music played fine, but there was no other sound like there was in the trailer on Steam. The sounds are not actually required to play, but it does lose a bit of impact without them.
It worked fine
I played <15 minutes, but that was all I needed to finish the tiny "campaign" and try a bit of the endless mode. I played with a keyboard/mouse but didn't test a controller.
It does not work in DirectX mode, only OpenGL. When you first run the game, it displays an error message "3D device not found" (twice) and then a black screen. When the black screen comes up, press Alt-Enter to go into windowed mode. Then you can use the menu View->Graphics->OpenGL. It will display an error message, after which you should close the game. That's the end of the setup.
When you run the game again, you will still get the "3D device not found", but if you press Alt-Enter to go to full screen, it will work fine. If you want to play in windowed mode, you need to press Alt-Enter twice when you run the game to switch to full-screen and back because it doesn't work initially in windowed mode. This last step is why I gave it a silver rating and not gold. If you play in fullscreen mode then it is a gold rating.
This failed with an error message about DirectX 11 support if I didn't turn on Wine's D3D support with PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1. The game ran nicely once it finally started running, but the driving was uncontrollable. It was way too sensitive to be able to use they keyboard, and I was stuck turning hard right with my Xbox 360 gamepad; sometimes in reverse only. I tried another Steam Play game to test the controller and it worked fine.
-- I just tried it again, and this time I found myself steering to the left, but forwards. I found one spot on the stick where I could get it to drive straight, but it was so sensitive that it kept wobbling left and right when I didn't change position. There is something wrong with the calibration. I can't try this game on Windows to see if it is the game or Wine/Proton.
Worked perfectly, with the only exception being that once I turned it to fullscreen on the first run, it didn't black out the borders at the side (it's not a widescreen game). I could still see parts of my desktop. The second time that I ran the game (once fullscreen was the default) everything displayed correctly. This wasn't enough of a problem for me to lower the score.
Like the other reviewers, I found fullscreen only showed a tiny portion of the screen, making it unusable. I had to press Alt-Enter to switch to windowed mode. It played perfectly in a window. Fortunately, being a card game it is not a big deal to play it this way. You can resize the window and the game scales to fit.
The game loaded, but it asks you to select an episode to play but the list was empty and it stopped responding to input. Unlike others who had to kill a process, I found Alt-F4 and then clicking on Quit in the prompt saying that it was not responding was enough to quit completely.
I ran this a year ago without luck. Now with a new Proton, it worked perfectly.
Three months ago I reported that this didn't run at all; that it just had a DirectX error. I tried it again using a newer version of Proton and I found that it worked. You just need to set PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 in your launch properties. Unfortunately, even at 800x600 at the lowest video settings the framerate was unplayably low (<10fps). Perhaps someone with a better system than mine would have more luck, as my CPU doesn't meet the minimum specs to run it on Windows!
Proton just gets better and better
A bit over year ago, I reported that this game did not work at all. Eleven months ago it did work, but was 10 frames per minute at lowest settings at 800x600. Today, it played quite well (given my low-end PC) at full resolution. It required no tweaks at all.
Worked perfectly in both windowed and full-screen modes. (I found it easier in a window when using a large screen. Full screen would be fine for laptops.) Tested with Proton Beta 3.16-6 and 4.2-2.
This game loaded fine and played fine. I didn't have to use any tricks. However, I have had it crash to desktop a few times. It happened when I tried walking off the side of the screen, so I think it may actually be a game bug rather than a Proton failure. As long as I didn't try to wander outside the game area, it seemed to be OK. Another problem is that once you set it to full screen mode, you can't change it back to windowed mode as it returns to the option screen that is too far to the right to hit the save button. It initially started in windowed mode, so if you prefer that then don't change it.
Works as well as it does on Windows. It only displays in a window, but the game does not support fullscreen mode at all so it is not a fault of Proton.
Full disclosure: I played the DRM-free version, but don't anticipate that there would be any difference with the Steam version. This game played perfectly in both full screen and windowed modes. I initially thought that there was a problem with the save system not working when you quit and load the game again, but this turned out to be just the game's stupid user interface. Remember to click the disk icon before quitting, then the down arrow to load the game when you start again.
The tiny snowflakes that appear over the startup menu were almost the size of the screen (making it unplayable) until I set the launch options to: PROTON_FORCE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE=1 %command%
After that it worked fine. It takes a few minutes to load, but that happens on Windows too.
The game works fine, except I had to unplug my 360 controller otherwise I would constantly run in random directions. To check my hardware, I tried another Proton game and the controller worked fine in that. Fortunately, the game played fine with the keyboard.
Same story as the others. Can only play in a window, and the setup screen shows some options with black text on a black background. Other than that it is playable. Worked with both keyboard and controller.
It took about a minute to start the first time, but other than that it works like a native game. The only other quirk is that when you Alt-Tab from the game it doesn't minimize but instead stays visible behind the window you switched to. No problem unless you wanted to access the icons on your desktop.
I expected to have to work for this game, but it started and played perfectly the first time. No tweaks required.
Other than only playing in windowed mode, the game played well.
Started in window and I could not find a way to make it fullscreen. All I could do was maximise it, which was close enough for this game.
This is now a native Linux game, even though it is currently not listed on the store page. I just completed it on Linux and Steam Play was not used.
It worked OK in a window, but not fullscreen.
Someone in the Steam forum had the same problem (presumable on Windows). Speculation: It may be due to me having a less than 1080p monitor. The game was still playable in a window.
I found the deadzone on the controller to be too small so I would sometimes overshoot or keep jumping, but I don't normally play with one and my old 360 gamepad might be a bit dodgy anyway. It would be unfair for me to claim that this was a Proton problem.
