Dag
Published
It's definitely possible to play AOE4 on a controller, even at a fairly high level. There are a couple streamers who do it on desktop PCs using Xbox controllers. There is also an AOE2 pro player who sometimes plays on an alt account with a controller. But personally I find it quite unintuitive and difficult to get used to... I wouldn't play the game this way. I'll have to get a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and try again with those.
I did not try multiplayer since I would have been absolutely dominated while playing on a controller. Based on other reports, it sounds like you need to run this script to replace some Visual C++ runtime DLLs to fix a desync issue: https://gist.github.com/reneklacan/7825b82723bf0534cbd2eae014e121ca#file-aoe4-mp-fix-sh
Changed graphics settings to custom - medium settings with AO disabled
Occasional significant stutters. I'm not sure if this is a Proton/Steam Deck issue or an issue with the game itself; Final Fantasy VII Remake had similar stuttering issues on Windows. I suspect it's related to shader compilation, as it seemed to get better over time.
I've only played for about half an hour so far, but the game appears to work perfectly aside from the aforementioned performance issues. Playing the remaster now on Steam Deck reminds me of playing the original on PSP back in the day :)
Bound back grip buttons to mousewheel for zooming in and out
Limited framerate to 60FPS
Game has native controller support but it's not implemented all that well. Mixing mouse/keyboard and controller inputs can make it confused resulting in issues like popups that won't dismiss
Lost a game unexpectedly with no explanation given. I don't think this is a Linux-specific issue; the game seems to just be a bit buggy.
ProtonDB and SteamDB claim that this game has a native Linux build, but when I look at the local files on my Steam Deck, it appears that the Windows build was installed. Not sure why - maybe the Linux build is no longer maintained?
Initially the game seemed to run fine, but as my cult got bigger I found that I was no longer able to maintain a stable 60 FPS on medium settings when visiting the cult. I dropped the settings to low and that seems to have mostly fixed it.
I've now played several hours on Steam Deck, and I haven't experienced any gameplay issues or Deck-specific bugs. I'm on the Preview channel, but I didn't change my Proton version or anything. There are some performance issues as mentioned above, but lowering the graphics settings seems to fix them.
A couple minor complaints: first, graphics settings are synced with your cloud saves so if you're playing on both Deck and PC, you'll have to change your graphics settings every time you switch devices. Second, some of the enemies in the game can be hard to see on the small screen, compared to playing on a normal monitor. But overall I'd still consider this a great Steam Deck game.
Set refresh rate to 40hz
At one point, audio stopped completely and I had to restart the game to get it back. This has only happened once in 6-8 hours of playing on Steam Deck, so it may have just been a random bug.
Occasional stutters during gameplay. In another game this might not be a big problem, but this game is fast-pased and highly punishing when you make a mistake, so a stutter at the wrong time could be the difference between beating a boss or dying and having to start over.
Videos don't render properly, including the intro cutscene and the in-game skill previews.
Surprised that Valve marks this game as Deck Verified. It's playable, sure, but without the skill preview videos it can be hard to understand how abilities are supposed to work before you unlock them, and if you're interested in the story, you're going to have to watch the cutscenes on YouTube. If it were just the videos being busted it might be tolerable, but stutters during gameplay in such a fast-paced and challening game really hamper the experience.
Fullscreen introductory "cutscenes" before boss fights don't play properly. The display just turns black. The game continues to work once the cutscene is finished, though.
Limited to 30FPS
Lots of text and interface elements are very small. There's currently no option to increase UI scale.
The game is still in beta, so hopefully there will be improvements before the final release. It's definitely playable, but there's currently no built-in controller support, so all the interactions are done via mouse and keyboard emulation. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the lack of UI scaling options, which both makes a lot of the text hard to read, and means that some of the buttons you have to click on are really small on the Steam Deck screen.
With a bit of UI polish and native controller support, though, this could be a great Steam Deck game.
Limited framerate to 30FPS
You can increase the UI scale from the settings menu, which I highly recommend doing. Some text is still a bit small, but not illegible.
Griftlands has a lot of extra information about cards and effects that is shown on mouseover. I couldn't get some of this info to show via the gamepad inputs, so I had to use the trackpad as a mouse for this.
gamemoderun %command%
On first launch, after signing into Xbox Live, the game got stuck on a spinner animation and the main menu never loaded. I force quit the game from the Steam menu and started it again. This time, I saw a "Welcome back" Xbox Live prompt, and after dismissing it, the game successfully launched and I was able to play.
Played a bot match and everything ran smoothly. Got a relatively solid 60 FPS with all settings on low and resolution set to 1920x1200. The controls felt pretty natural for a Halo game, although I haven't played first person shooters on a controller in a long time. But I think if you were used to playing on a controller, you could be fairly competitive on Steam Deck.
Works surprisingly well for a title that is officially not supported and, as of this writing, marked as Borked in ProtonDB. Hopefully Valve will update the built-in version of Proton to add official support soon.
Limit to 40hz
Steam Cloud sync doesn't work
Inscryption is definitely completely playable on Steam Deck, and by adjusting performance settings you should get ample battery life. But there are a couple issues that seem really strange to me.
First, there's no built-in controller support so the game uses a community layout that maps the buttons to mouse and keyboard controls. It works fine for the most part, but this game is also on console, so I don't see why it doesn't have native controller support on Steam. I haven't played a ton so far but I don't see anything that needs to be done with the mouse, and I think it would be a lot smoother on Deck with native controls.
Second, Steam Cloud saves don't work, at least not if you try to sync from Steam Deck to Windows. I saw some suggested workarounds for this, but they didn't work for me.
Set refresh rate to 40hz
The game wouldn't launch at all for me until I changed the Proton version, so it's weird that Steam rates it as "playable." Maybe this was broken in a recent update, but it is NOT playable out of the box. However, it runs just fine after changing to Proton GE 7-27.
Some text is quite small, but not to the point of being unreadable
Xbox Live login doesn't work - the sign-in window never displays. It's not needed to play the game, though; it just allows you to unlock XBL achievements.
The main menu took a long time to load the first time I launched the game, but once I got into the game everything worked perfectly.
I put the game on Balanced graphical settings and was getting a solid 60FPS. If you want longer battery life, you can drop it down to the lower graphical preset, but I found that that made the game unpleasantly blurry even after bumping up the resolution scale.
Reassigned buttons to match in-game controls
Not really unexpected, but the game runs very poorly on Steam Deck. Only got around 15 FPS on average.
It's a meme game made by one dude with UE5, so I wasn't expecting much, but I wanted to see if Steam Deck could handle it. While it is playable, the performance is very poor, and there's no built-in support for controllers so you have to create a custom layout to map the buttons correctly. This means you don't get analog movement, but you're also missing the precise camera control afforded by a real mouse. Overall, much better to just play on a PC.
Some yes/no dialogs don't work on controller. Probably a bug in the game rather than a Steam Deck/Proton issue.
If you get stuck on certain Yes/No dialogs, you can just use the touchscreen to advance, or change your control scheme to gamepad with mouse.
Lowered graphics settings
Custom orders window is pretty much unreadable. Some icons are very hard to see.
Controller sometimes randomly stops working or won't move to the right UI element, requiring the use of the trackpad and mouse buttons
Definitely playable on Steam Deck, but not a great experience. I would recommend playing on desktop instead if possible.
As others have mentioned, the player character does not render correctly if you use any resolution other than 1280 x 768. As long as you stick to that resolution, everything works fine.
One issue with playing Rain World on the Steam Deck's small screen is that certain visual elements can be hard to make out - for instance, lizards hiding in pipes or crevices. But from a technical perspective, the game works fine as long as you use the correct resolution setting.
This game is a dream to play on Steam Deck. In 10 hours of playing I did get one period of unexpected slowdown, not even during a particularly busy gameplay section, but it was a one-off and I haven't had any issues since. Some text is small, but by no means unreadable.
Works great on Steam Deck. Typically 60 FPS with some dips to ~30 on low settings and 80% in-game resolution scale.
Occasional stuttering
The Last Spell seems to run mostly fine on Steam Deck, but the game isn't designed to be played with a controller, and it really shows. For one thing, as far as I can tell, the default layout doesn't have any key bindings for zooming in or out, and the game is pretty hard to interact with on the Steam Deck's small screen when fully zoomed out. I'm sure you could make the game more playable using a custom layout, but I wish the devs had put more effort into controller support in the first place - I don't think the game is so complex that it couldn't have an easy-to-use default controller layout.
The game uses the EA Desktop launcher. You'll need to use the touchscreen a mouse and keyboard to sign in. On the bright side, if you previously played on Origin/EA Desktop, your cloud saves will be synced from there and Steam achievements will be automatically unlocked!
When the game first started up, it was running at some ridiculously low resolution that made even larger text very difficult to read. I couldn't even tell what the resolution was, but I'm guessing it was the lowest one the game will run at. Once I was able to get into the settings and bump up to the max resolution offered, everything was fine.
Noticed a few stutters here and there. Didn't play long enough to see if it would be a major issue.
When exiting the game, the EA launcher didn't close correctly, so I had to hit B on the Steam Deck to abort the game.
I only played for a few minutes to try it out, but it looks like everything should work fine with the exception of some performance issues. Some graphics settings might need to be turned down to get stable performance, but Unravel doesn't offer a lot of options in that regard. I loved this game when I originally played it on desktop, so I'm hoping to find time to play it again soon. If I get more playtime in, I'll update my review with any additional issues I find.
EA Desktop launcher showed up and took some time to do things. I had already logged in when launching Unravel 1, so I don't think I had to log in again. Otherwise, you'll need to use the touchscreen a mouse and keyboard to sign in. On the bright side, if you previously played on Origin/EA Desktop, your cloud saves will be synced from there and Steam achievements will be automatically unlocked! After the launcher finished, I was stuck on a white screen for quite some time, but the game did eventually start.
Once I got past the EA Desktop launcher, the game seemed to run great. I was getting a solid 60 FPS without changing any settings. This surprised me, as it's better than the performance I got in Unravel I. I only played for a few minutes to try it out, but it seemed like everything was working perfectly. I loved this game when I originally played it on desktop, so I'm hoping to find time to play it again soon. If I get more playtime in, I'll update my review with any additional issues I find.
