Smile for Me is a unique puzzle game that will take you through an unconventional adventure that involves depressed clowns, emotional baggage, alarming puppetry, and a narrator who is dead set on being condescending. Solve mysteries and cheer up the people of an abstract world, learn some juicy gossip, secret backstories, and choose who you want to save (or save them all). What will you decide? What will you learn? Will you ever figure out where you are? Only time will tell!
To say Smile for Me is a very weird game is an understatement. From the visuals, to the premise, to the fact you need to actually move your camera up and down or side to side to simulate nodding to who you talk to, it is just so out there and I am all for it! I love seeing these games pop up that do something so wildly different and take a quirky or distinctive spin on a working formula is so cool. With 23 characters to talk to with different personalities and depth, Smile for Me is an experience that you won't find anywhere else.
Today, Smile for Me also released on consoles! With this release came a new update that added French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages to the game. There was also the Bloom update that came in December which overhauled the visuals, soundtrack, added easter eggs, and stability improvements! And without changing a thing, you will be able to enjoy this all on the Steam Deck.
Without any changes, Smile for Me can run at a solid 60 FPS on the Steam Deck! The battery drain is a little on the high side, maxing around 11.5W for 3.5-4 hours, but it isn't terrible.
The game supports 16:10 resolutions, so your Deck screen will be filled, full controller support, and cloud saves. It feels great to play in my hands and after doing it once, I can't see myself playing it any other way.
If you want to save battery but still retain the smoothness, dropping the framerate and refresh rate to 40 will save about 1.5W of battery, which can add around 30-45 minutes of gameplay with around a 4.5 hour battery.
Smile for Me is a weird...weird game and I couldn't be happier. It's a game I wouldn't look at and immediately think it is for me, but after playing it, I am so glad I did. The characters are interesting with great humor, the stories keep me invested, the puzzles are engaging, and the music is wonderful. All put together, we have a great game that runs fantastic on the Steam Deck just as is! You can lower the framerate and refresh rate to 40 to save a bit on battery, but I wouldn't consider this necessary at all. If you are a quirky game fan or enjoy point-and-clicks, this is the game for you!
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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Smile for Me is a humorous and quirky puzzle game where helping make people smile is the name of the game! And you can do it all flawlessly on your Steam Deck.
