Sumerian Six

Sumerian Six was provided by Devolver Digital for review. Thank you!

Sumerian Six is a real-time tactical strategy game, and I went into this one with high hopes, as these types of games often play quite well on the Steam Deck, only requiring 30 FPS to be playable, and often with the ability to pause at any time being a feature of the genre. As it turns out, Sumerian Six delivered on these areas and more!

To fill you in on the basic premise of Sumerian Six, you take control of the Enigma Squad, a group dedicated to researching the effects of an otherworldly material known as Geiststoff. Meanwhile, the Enigma Squad eventually decided that the material was too powerful and should be left alone. One of their members breaks off and joins the Nazis, taking the group's knowledge about the material with them to help the Nazis build a supernatural superweapon.

The story is gradually expanded through short dialogue during missions and more lengthy cutscenes, usually at the end of missions. But the story is fairly basic and, for the most part, predictable. Most of the characters are two-dimensional, there to serve a gameplay purpose more than anything else. Although there are a couple of twists, the storyline isn't Sumerian Six's strongest suit.

The basic gameplay of Sumerian Six is your typical tactical strategy affair. With stealth being the order of the day, being detected very likely results in your death, so the entire game is based around studying enemy patrol routes, keeping an eye on the enemy's line of sight, and picking off vulnerable enemies on the outskirts of the group, or, if that's not possible, using the game's "action planner" system to allow several of your party members to act at once, thus taking out multiple enemies within a short moment of each other, so as not to raise the alarm.

The systems work very well together, with the game almost having a puzzle-like feel, as it's all about finding the right time to act and what actions to take. While there are multiple solutions to each situation, it is fun to work out how to tackle each problem, which gets increasingly more complex as the game progresses and you unlock more character abilities.

Speaking of character abilities, these form the crux of the moves you'll use to take out your foes. While all characters in your party can sneak up on enemies and take them out with a melee execution, each of your characters will also have several special abilities at their disposal, and it's up to you to decide how best to use them to tackle your current situation.

Early on in the game, for example, you'll be restricted to abilities that mainly distract enemies, causing them to either move from their current location or temporarily stun them so you can move them outside of the line of sight of their allies, or so you can take out someone they're looking at without them realizing it.

But as the game progresses, you'll unlock more abilities and encounter different varieties of enemies that will require more thought on how to handle them. Some enemies are immune to distractions, while others cannot be removed with the melee execution moves and are only vulnerable to offensive abilities. Soon, you'll be using chain lightning to take out grouped enemies, planting bombs on patrolling enemies and choosing the best time to detonate the bomb, and even using a launch pad that can displace enemies while simultaneously killing them, useful for quickly disposing of a body so their friends don't see it.

All of this keeps the game feeling fresh. New enemies will need new methods to tackle them, and the new abilities you get as you progress through the game keep opening up more doors for you to take when dealing with situations.

All of this combines to make a beautifully complex and yet not daunting game. I'm pretty slow when playing these games, often sitting back and analyzing the situation, deciding which enemy is the easiest to take out first, figuring out what ability I should use, and executing the plan. The game does reward you for finishing a mission fast but also doesn't penalize you for taking it slow either. Yes, it can take some time to work out how to proceed, but the game gives you that time. Plus, you can open the action planner and effectively pause the game at any point if you are in a rare situation where you need to quickly act, before say, a patrolling enemy finds you.

Visually, Sumerian Six holds up. A key aspect of these games is clarity, knowing where the enemies are, what they're seeing, differentiating enemy types, etc. And Sumerian Six executes this well. The line of sight is very clearly visible, enemy types have different models and key colors to separate them, and if all else fails, there's a minimap on the screen at all times which shows you where the enemies are and which direction they're pointing, for an easy overview of the situation.

From a technical graphics perspective, Sumerian Six won't be winning any awards, but the graphics serve their purpose just fine and are pretty pleasing to look at. No poor texturing or anything stood out to me during my playthrough, at least.

Sumerian Six is a solid tactical strategy game. While the storyline is basic, it provides a premise and intrigue about what you might face next. The gameplay shines through here though, with well-built stealth mechanics, a selection of different environments to explore, plus that variety that comes from facing new types of enemies and unlocking new abilities to defeat them. The game isn't too long, and if you're gung-ho in your approach, you can finish the campaign in less than 10 hours with the game split into 10 missions, with the "speedrun" secondary objective often requiring you to finish the missions in around 25-35 minutes each. But if you're a fan of this genre, you'll probably enjoy every minute of this adventure.

As a side note, one feature I adored about Sumerian Six is that the game autosaves every 30 seconds. This means that if you just made a mistake, you can load back up to before you made the mistake in a matter of seconds. This is incredibly useful, and I took advantage of it during my time with the game.

Sumerian Six - Steam Deck Performance

Sumerian Six is a pretty painless experience on the Steam Deck. The game is well-adapted to controllers, so you shouldn't have any problems using your Steam Deck controller, and the game defaults to settings that I recommend you stick with.

Recommended Settings - 30 FPS

By default on the Steam Deck, Sumerian Six is set to Low settings, with the exception of Textures, which are kept on High. I recommend staying with these settings. The only thing I would change is enabling the in-game FPS limiter and setting it to 30 FPS.

For SteamOS settings, you won't really want to have a frame rate limit, as the in-game limiter works well and doesn't introduce input lag. You'll also want to remove any TDP Limit, as the game is quite power-hungry.

At these settings, you should be able to maintain a fairly solid 30 FPS throughout gameplay, although some cutscenes will drop as low as 20 FPS, as they have a habit of showing you an overview of the map the mission takes place on, which pans over the area. Visually, the game still holds up quite well, though.

The game's power draw varies wildly depending on the environment and the enemies in your vicinity, but it stays on the higher end, ranging between 14W and 19W for the most part. I did experience power draw up to 24W on a later mission, though.

Temperatures also vary greatly, as you might expect, given the power draw situation. They are around 65C-70C on earlier and smaller missions before heading up to the 70-80C range in later missions with larger groups of enemies. The fan is largely quiet in earlier missions but becomes fairly audible later on.

Accessibility:

Sumerian Six has some accessibility features. It has subtitles, which have adjustable font sizes and are perfectly readable on the Steam Deck. It also has constant auto-saving, which tends to save every 30 seconds, allowing you to repeat your last actions if you make a mistake and get shot! Plus, the game can go into slow-motion if you are in danger of being detected, giving you a couple of seconds to react to hide yourself if possible.

There are also some colorblind filters available.

Conclusion:

Sumerian Six is a solid entry into the tactical strategy genre. The stealth mechanics are implemented and displayed well, the level design is varied and keeps you on your toes as to how you will tackle each situation, and the constant introduction of new enemy types and player abilities just brings even more variety to the game.

If you love the tactical strategy genre, you should definitely give Sumerian Six a play. Even if you are just curious about it, I'd recommend you give the demo a try to see if this is your kind of game. As someone who hasn't played many games in this genre, I did enjoy my time with it, so it's well worth a look.

Steam Deck performance isn't fantastic, with us being restricted to 30 FPS, but in a game like this, 30 FPS is sufficient to have a good time, and the controls work great. Sumerian Six is perfectly playable on the Steam Deck, and I don't think you'd miss out by playing it on your portable device compared to any other way of playing the game.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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