Scathe - A Steam Deck Preview

Scathe was provided from publisher Kwalee. Thank you!

Since DOOM went through a major overhaul in 2016, people have felt a renewed kinship for fast-paced FPS games. In 2020, this continued to prove true as the sequel, DOOM Eternal, was released. Now, here we are in 2022, and there certainly are a lot of games that can fill the desire for more fast-paced action. Luckily, we have Scathe.

Scathe Game Overview

Developed by Damage Slate Ltd, and published by Kwalee, Scathe is an intense FPS in a beautiful nightmarish hell-scape. As an enforcer of the Legions of Hell, you must prove yourself and use your strength, speed, and cunning to navigate a maze entangled with evil. Using an arsenal of weapons and magic, you will have to get through this maze in one piece, collecting runes, Hellstones, and uncovering secrets as you go, to show you are worthy of your title.

The game itself is quite fun and I am really enjoying my time with it. The environments look fantastic and decently diverse, the speed of the character and game itself feels good, guns feel responsive, and there is blood everywhere. The game has drop in/out coop, which is a fantastic way to experience the game. There are three different modes, a singleplayer, private coop, and public coop mode. Unfortunately, I only had one key provided to me so I didn't get to test the coop features, and I did sit in open coop for awhile though nobody joined, but I am optimistic about it after what I've experienced the past couple days.

Per the preview build I was given, I was placed on a decent sized maze that was split up into different zones. Each zone had different unique layouts, as well as enemies, ammo drops, and collectible runes. Some zones had different conditions to unlock pathways to other zones, like one where I had to kill 60 demons to progress, which spiced up the running around and allowed me to just focus on killing. Every zone had six runes to collect, and when collected enough, the boss at the end of the preview was unlocked. There were also mini bosses I encountered which gave me Hellstones, so I could open the escape.

I truly don't remember the last time I had a good time finding and getting collectibles, and while I wouldn't say I loved it, I did enjoy it. They weren't hard to find, but they were placed in areas I had to really look and platform a bit to get.

Through the maze, I was able to make use of three different weapons. The Hellhammer, a machine gun with unlimited ammo and rockets, the Thunderbolt, which shoots raw electric energy, and the Ripper, a shotgun which also fires a proximity mine. I tended to use the Hellhammer most, though this was due to me being terrible and unlimited ammo was just too tempting. On top of that, you are able to dash/melee, which can fling enemies in front of you. The dashing aspect can help cross bigger areas while the bashing can...well bash demons away.

Running and gunning felt great and movement was fast and responsive. I also tried out enabling gyro controls, which helped me fine-tune my aim accurately onto their heads. Audio was much better than I expected too. Headshotting demons makes a really satisfying pop which, after lining up a bunch of grunts and blasting their skulls, gave me way too much satisfaction. The soundtrack works well at pumping me up for some demon slaying action, no qualms about it whatsoever!

I also want to make special mention of the enemies. You will come across angry and mean looking demons with horrific designs, but the worst of them all will be the balls. These balls are absolutely relentless. You would think the demons with guns shooting at me would be my main concern, but the ball enemies are much worse. Not only do they roll super fast, but they also BOUNCE AROUND toward you. I have died from a ball falling on me from above and exploding, completely freaking me out since I had no idea it was there. Beware of the balls for they are truly evil. And you'll really feel hell when you discover there are ball enemies that are near invisible...they have dominated my nightmares.

Scathe Steam Deck Performance

While the game is a good time, we are here to talk about how Scathe not only performs, but feels on Deck. I am happy to say that in the preview build I had access to, this game is playable! Setting it at 45 FPS seemed to be the sweet spot, but with enough configuration, I got it to 50 with some minor slowdowns. Settings were a mix of low and medium, which I felt looked fantastic, but anything more started to slow the game down. Explosions tended to push framerate spikes, but it didn't last too long or impact the flow of gameplay. Having a ton of explosions or exploding enemies on screen did however slow gameplay down a bit, and I have ideas on how to mitigate that, but there were some issues in my initial testing. Scathe also a UE4 game, so there is some stuttering, but turning on the GPU Clock Speed Frequency to 1100 helped a lot. There was one zone that did slowdown my game to around 32 FPS, but this was an isolated incident and didn't affect the rest of the game.

Navigating the settings menu was not easy. The game has not been optimized well for the Deck controller so using it wasn't intuitive. The left and right D-Pad and Analog Stick does not natively navigate through any of the video options. The only way I could do it was continually press A to scroll through them one at a time. I also encountered an issue when pausing and going to settings in-game. Clicking the left D-Pad goes to another menu. For example, if you are looking at the video settings and you hit the left D-Pad to change any settings, and it will go back to the previous menu completely. It also seems resolution scaling doesn't work, which could have helped with stabilization.

I have reached out to the Production Manager handling Scathe at Kwalee to note these issues and he responded very positively. The team is working on the controller/menu issues right now and passed along my issues, including possibly adding in 16:10 resolution options. He also mentioned the game is aiming for a "Playable" rating as they don't actually have a Steam Deck to test all of this on. I was left with a good feeling that the comments I made were being taken seriously.

Verdict

Overall, I was impressed with how the game performed on Deck. This was a preview build, so I expected more issues than I got. With some optimization and fixing the settings, Scathe could be a fantastic fit for the Deck. It looks fantastic on the smaller screen, feels great with a controller in-game, and has the contender to be a great addition to the intense FPS bullet hell genre. The game is also really enjoyable to play, with beautiful environments and There are some things to be worked on, like the menu fixes, resolution scale working, and more 16:10 resolution options, but for a company that doesn't have a Steam Deck to test things on, it is playing really well.

I can personally say I am super excited for release. I had a blast playing this game and can't wait to see what is going to be in the full release! Scathe will be released on August 31st on the Steam store. We will be posting a video on Scathe soon as well and the post will be updated accordingly!

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