Denilson Sá
Published
Remapped the B button to the Z key.
The text is mostly legible, but some text is somewhat small on the Steam Deck screen.
The game was designed with Mouse and Keyboard in mind. It works fine with Steam Deck's controls, and even the touch screen works fine. The controls are: arrows/WASD, R to reset, Z to undo, Space to do stuff, Escape to do something else. At one point, you have to manually activate the on-screen keyboard to be able to type something.
Controller worked out of the box, but showed as keyboard inputs. Possibly because of the default Steam Input layout, but I did not investigate.
Steam kept complaining about cloud saves not being synced. Possibly due to crashes.
Framerate was 30fps or lower. Either the game isn't optimized or too demanding for Steam Deck.
Crashes a couple of minutes after launching. Possibly due to lack of RAM or VRAM or some other crash.
I wish I could answer "I don't know". There was no one else playing, so I can't measure lag. And the game crashed shortly afterwards.
Multiplayer is mostly dead, only one server was online and no one was connected.
Do not enable "Half Rate Shading", as that makes the textures very blurry and makes the tiny sparkling effects nearly invisible.
Well, not the text, but the postcards and some items might look too small. That's because the game was originally designed for smartphones (vertical screen), so on PCs everything looks smaller and further away.
Touch screen required two taps to register each action. (Which may be by design, I haven't tried playing it on Windows, I don't know if it behaves any different.)
A virtual menu for quickly selecting weapons. And a few other tweaks.
Some text is quite small, by design.
Reducing/disabling post-processing shading effects makes the game run smooth on Steam Deck. (Well, except in a few areas.)
The game runs mostly fine, but you might need/want to tweak a few settings for better performance (and uglier visuals) and for better input mapping.
By default, not all commands are mapped to the gamepad. Also, the UI cannot be navigated using the gamepad.
Best designed for mouse and keyboard.
Playing with the gamepad is supported, but requires tinkering to map many unmapped controls.
The menu is designed to be interacted with a mouse. Touchscreen kinda works, but the targets are too small and you cannot touch-drag to scroll, you have to touch-drag the thin scrollbar handle. So… Please use a mouse or emulate one.
Uses 50%~100% of CPU all the time, the device gets hot, the fan spins loudly, and the battery doesn't last long.
I tried lowering the TDP. No luck.
Due to the default resolution + borderless fullscreen, some parts of the UI seemed to be displayed off-screen.
The default settings had a borderless window that had part of the UI off-screen.
High CPU usage and performance problems seem to be a recent issue, after taking a quick look at the Steam forums. Still, it's not enjoyable in the current state.
The default resolution was larger than Steam Deck, I had to change it in settings.
I disabled anti-aliasing in the options menu. I haven't measured what impact it has.
The text can be quite small. Thankfully, there isn't much text.
Upon quitting the game, Steam kept waiting for it to finish quitting, until I gave up and force-exit.
The developers announced they will stop selling this game while they reimplement it in a new engine.
The the game doesn't seem to support gamepad (or, if it does, the default Steam Input layout doesn't report itself as a gamepad), and the non-remappable keyboard bindings are not great. It's easier to just click with the mouse or tap the screen.
Repetitive and grindy. You need to complete one level challenge to unlock the next level. Doesn't have cloud save support.
Doesn't seem to have Cloud Save. My progress from the other computer was not restored.
Using a custom controller layout makes the game very playable:
- A = Space (Jump/Play)
- B = Insert (Options)
- X = Home (Map)
- Y = Tab (Restart/Credits) | Backspace (Replay)
- Start|Select = Escape (Menu/Quit)
I tried sharing my layout, but I'm not sure if it is available to other people.
Native version doesn't start, or crashes immediately after starting. Proton Experimental version launches to a white window that can't be interacted. This game is unplayable in the current state.
The chip will be hot and the fan will be blowing loudly. The "H" key is not bound on the default Steam Deck controls. You can press it by opening the virtual keyboard. Or you can just ignore it, as it shows no additional information.
The code that is displayed (or rewarded) to the player after completing each set of puzzles is not visible. Pretty major issue, considering the point of this game is to collect codes to use in another game. (Only happens on native version, works fine on Proton.)
There is no Cloud Save. Game progress is not transferred between native and proton versions on the same machine.
There is no cloud save. The progress is not transferred between devices, and it is not transferred between Native and Proton versions on the same device.
The native version is buggy because the codes (rewarded after completing each set of puzzles) is invisble.
Just remember to switch to the Windows version (using Proton) before you start playing.
Set the outer ring of the left joystick/trackpad to press Shift, making the transition between walking and running seamless.
The game is not optimized, the fans were constantly spinning. Setting to 40Hz helps a bit, but the device still runs hot.
The post-credits sequence plays back a video, but it is displayed corrupted.
The game has no options. You have to play with keyboard+mouse. Setting mouse emulation for Steam Deck controller works, but the game requires more precision. Using an external (Bluetooth) mouse half-works: I could use the mouse in the drawing sequences, but couldn't use it to move the camera.
No settings screen. Some minor trouble with emulated+real mouse controls. And garbled video playback at the end. Other than that, the game plays fine and can be completed from the start to the end.
Extremely CPU and GPU heavy. It will generate a lot of heat, consume a lot of Watts, and make a lot of noise while the fans spin very fast.
I do not recommend using it.
Try the Steam Deck's built-in input tester, or even try a simple tool I wrote myself 15 years ago: https://github.com/denilsonsa/pygame-joystick-test
It launches to the loading screen, and then just closes/crashes a few seconds later. An earlier version with the older game engine used to run, but the newer engine in the 2023 REMAKE doesn't work at all under Proton.
