Strategy Archives - Steam Deck HQ

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 was provided by 2K for review. Thank you!

After what seemed like the longest wait in history, Sid Meier's Civilization 7 has finally launched. While everyone knew that this new entry to the series would bring many changes, it's quite hard to overstate just how much Civilization 7 shakes up the formula for Civilization games. While some core elements, such as the way units function in the game, remain largely unchanged, the rest of the game has seen a pretty dramatic overhaul in how things are done.

Civilization 7 is based around 3 ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. In a standard game, players will progress through all 3 ages, and gameplay will shift dramatically as you advance between them. The Antiquity Age is all about founding your core cities, making initial contact with your neighbors, and perhaps even conquering them to lessen the competition later on. The Exploration Age opens up the full world map by having ships that can navigate the oceans, and the Modern Age encourages players to confront each other by having little land left to seize while giving players a high city limit.

When the current age ends, which is determined by a set number of turns that can be decreased if a civilization is very technologically advanced, everyone's cities (besides their capitals) will revert to towns, meaning you can only purchase units/buildings there, not produce, becoming more reliant on your capital. Civilizations may also lose a large amount of their army if they don't have enough Army Commanders available to support them between ages, and all units are transported back to their cities. Thus, the ages function like phases in the game, sort of a soft reset where Civilizations will somewhat start afresh. Still, with the territory and bonuses they accumulated in the previous age.

Wars also won't carry on between ages, although if you were previously at war, you'll start the age with a relationship penalty with any AI states you were at war with.

Does this system work well? It depends on your approach. In my initial games, I didn't understand the Age system, nor was it very well explained in the game, which became a bit of a theme with Civilization 7. Therefore, I found the age system a little frustrating at first. Once you understand that you need Army Commanders to keep your army between ages and that the Legacy Points system counts towards your final victory and carries over between ages, it makes much more sense.

Therein lies the issue I have with Civilization 7. I think the actual mechanics of the game are pretty interesting and, for the most part, work well. The problem is that the game just isn't explained or presented in an understandable fashion. I've spoken to a couple of others who have played, and they also didn't understand the Legacy Points system on their first game or even knew how to view what points they had. In a Civilization 7 Livestream hosted on the Firaxis Twitch channel, a player pointed out that there is no way to check what bonuses you have previously selected for your civilization in some cases.

Once you've played a few games and understand how it all works and how you need to play the game to win, I quite like this new direction that Civilization 7 goes in. It just needs to explain itself to the player better. Right now, it's treating players like they should know how all these mechanics work, but even if you are a Civilization veteran, these mechanics are brand new, and you won't understand them. This can be exacerbated by tutorials seeming to be disabled in multiplayer matches.

In a game like Civilization 7, players need to be given data clearly and understandably, and the UI isn't the best at providing the info needed. Right now, you go in assuming it will be like the other Civilization games, and the game doesn't tell you that it's any different at first, it's something you don't realize until later on when you realize you've fallen behind the competition.

The greatest pleasure I had from Civilization 7 was expanding and growing my empire. As cities grow, each population gained lets you claim another tile around the city, both giving that tile's resource yield and visually constructing buildings on that tile. It makes the game take on an almost city-builder aspect at points. Roads are now automatically constructed between cities, and "worker/builder" units are a thing of the past, with the city growth mechanic instead being how you improve tiles and their yield, and I like that change.

Presentation-wise, Civilization 7 feels like a step up. The game board is presented well, with varied biomes, with cliffs and coastlines looking nice. The expansion of cities across the world map makes the cities feel much more realistic and grand compared to the single-tile cities of the past. The music is also a plus point, as in classic Civilization games, it changes depending on your civilization, so it's always nice to hear a mix of cultural music.

There are some bugs right now in Civilization 7, and unfortunately, they mostly seem to plague the already-troubled UI system. Occasionally, tool-tips won't display, windows are sometimes displayed in the wrong order, and a couple of times, the controls on my gamepad entirely stopped functioning for a few seconds. We also had some issues with certain icons and in-game assets taking a long time to load, such as a city not visually appearing for several seconds or technology icons not being present for a while. I razed a city, and the name stayed on the map for the rest of the game.

Diplomacy with the AI has always been an issue in the Civilization games, and while I feel like the AI in Civilization 7 is a bit more measured in their approach, and you can understand why they take certain actions now, there are still some issues. When I was fighting the Romans for example, they offered me a city in exchange for peace, I accidentally took the city off the table, but when I re-added the city to the table, the game said the AI would reject the offer. Sure enough, when I attempted to propose the offer, it was rejected, even though it was the offer the AI had made me.

We also had several issues with multiplayer matches, where players were getting desynced and crashing to the desktop. While it was generally fine with two or three-player matches, once we added a fourth, someone always had an issue at some point.

Is Civilization 7 a bad game? By no means. It's fun, and some aspects feel improved by the game's slightly faster-paced, streamlined nature. But I can't help but feel that if the game had been given 2 or 3 more months in the oven, it would have launched to a much better reception. There are things that are straight-up missing from the UI that would be good to know. The new mechanics are not explained properly to newcomers or veterans of the series, and the bugs that crop up from time to time just exacerbate the situation.

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 - Steam Deck Performance

Civilization 7 feels like it was designed with the Steam Deck in mind, and that might not be so much of a surprise if you remember that the game is also on the Nintendo Switch. It supports 1280x800 as a resolution, so there are no black bars. It has the best controller support of any game in the series, and the text and UI are legible throughout.

Although I do have some problems with the UI, as I mentioned above, its layout is perfect for a handheld experience.

In SteamOS, I limited the frame rate to 30 FPS and the TDP to 8W.

When it comes to the graphical settings, the game defaults you to pretty decent settings, it seems as though Firaxis fine-tuned the settings for the Steam Deck themselves, which I decided to stick with for this one. Pushing the visuals higher makes it stutter when trying to zoom in and out, and going lower is possible with higher frame rates but drains the battery unnecessarily. The default settings are already low for battery drain, and moving to 40 FPS isn't as beneficial for this kind of game.

CivilizationVIISettings1 — *Click images to enlarge*

CivilizationVIISettings2 — *Click images to enlarge*

At these settings, the game pretty much runs at 30 FPS the vast majority of the time. Zooming into the cities will cause stuttering and slowdown, which can't be avoided. But as long as you play at a standard zoom level, you shouldn't see performance problems.

The power draw on my Steam Deck OLED was steady at around 9W- 11W, and temperatures were around 55C- 60C. So you can expect around 4.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and around 3.5 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 has a few accessibility options, such as rebindable controls, colorblind assistance, adjusting the font size, and displaying subtitles in cinematic scenes.

Conclusion:

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 is a good game at its core. When you're deep into playing the game and you understand the concepts and mechanics of it, it all works quite well together. Still, while you're learning the game, it can be a pretty unpleasant experience, plagued with unexplained game mechanics and UI issues that make the whole thing more confusing than it needs to be.

One thing you can't deny about Civilization 7 is that it runs beautifully on the Steam Deck. The graphics look good, the battery life is long, the performance is mostly smooth, and the controls are surprisingly well-adapted to a controller. You can play just as well on the Steam Deck as you would on a desktop PC.

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

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Knights in Tight Spaces was provided by Raw Fury for review. Thank you!

I never played Fights in Tight Spaces when it first came out, but after playing a bunch of Knights in Tight Spaces, I really wish I had. The game is a thoroughly enjoyable experience with great gameplay mechanics, an interesting art style, and a good amount of content to keep you busy. There are a couple of issues here and there, but there are way more pros than cons.

The basic premise of Knights in Tight Spaces is essentially a tactical battler, where your party is placed on a grid on a small map, and the actions you can take are dictated by the cards you hold in your hand. Each map might have specific objectives, but generally, you aim to defeat all enemies on the map or survive a certain number of turns. The entire gameplay is based on this battling system, so it has to work well, and it surely does.

The cards you can get are varied and allow you to set up some great combos that feel satisfying to pull off. All movement and attacks have to be done by playing a card, so you have to strategize which party member should use which cards to maximize the effectiveness of your turn. For example, one card might let you advance a space and attack, while another could make your character attack and retreat a space. Using these 2 cards in succession could allow you to make an attack on an enemy and then a further attack and pull your party member back to safety for the end of your turn.

You are also alerted to what attacks your opponents plan to take on the next turn, allowing you to try and position your party in a way that protects them from damage by playing your cards right, similar to games like Into the Breach.

Whether or not you can use a card depends on either your "momentum" or "combo" points. Momentum is granted at the start of each turn, and the combo is built by performing successive actions. If you've planned your moves well, you could play every card in your hand for a truly devastating turn. Your hand gets wiped after each turn, and new cards are drawn, so it's best to plan to use as many as you can.

Yes, there is a degree of RNG to all this gameplay, and on one specific occasion, I found the card system frustrating. Namely, it kept giving me attack moves when I was against a boss that could teleport my character around the map, meaning I needed a lot of movement cards to get close to the enemy. This resulted in about 7-8 turns in a row where I couldn't attack my opponent. My character also had enough "block" stat that the boss couldn't deal enough damage to hurt me, resulting in an endless stalemate if the enemy AI had chosen to keep teleporting me.

But generally, the game does a good job of rewarding your strategic skill, and if you lose a battle, you'll probably realize the turning point or action you took that put you in the losing position. There are also many difficulty settings to choose from, so you should be able to find the setting that suits your skill level and is enjoyable for you.

The overworld is where you'll decide what path to take. Most paths result in a battle, but some might result in a tavern where you can heal and recruit additional party members or a blacksmith where you can upgrade or buy new equipment.

Knights in Tight Spaces does have a storyline, which takes place in the form of written dialogue in the overworld as you navigate between certain battles. It's fairly generic as storylines go. Essentially, an unlikely hero is drawn into the action by forces beyond their control, and you now have to protect the kingdom from various threats that are posed to it. It's nothing special, but it serves as a purpose for the battles to take place.

Visually, the game prefers to make clear distinctions for characters rather than flesh them out with detail. The members of the player's party will be in green, neutral parties will be in yellow, and various factions you fight against will be colored red or purple. I much prefer this way of handling it, as it helps you as a player to see the situation and who your targets are immediately, making mistaken identities very unlikely. The environments are fairly detailed but stylized and kept on the more basic side.

Knights in Tight Spaces is an excellent tactical deck-builder. The story mode isn't too long, and if you beat it on your first attempt, it'll likely only take you about 4-5 hours, but there are other modes to try out as well, such as the Endless mode to test how far you can go, and the "Daily Play" mode to compare yourself against others. The balance of the card system and the feeling of satisfaction as you pull off a combo of moves to devastate your enemies or beat a battle without taking any damage is hard to beat.

Knights in Tight Spaces - Steam Deck Performance

Knights in Tight Spaces has excellent controller support and supports 1280x800 as a resolution, so there are no black bars around the screen.

There is, unfortunately, some very small text in the game that is hard to read, but it's generally not crucial text, so you can play just fine without it.

There isn't really much in the way of graphics settings. Aside from the resolution, there's just a tickbox for "High-End Graphics," which seems to improve some lighting. However, it also impacts performance quite a bit, so we have to keep it off on the Steam Deck. With those settings, we must limit the game to 30 FPS with the SteamOS Frame Limiter and run a TDP Limit of 11W.

Knights in Tight Spaces holds a steady 30 FPS at this point. While earlier maps and battles can run at 40 FPS, I found that once you reach "Quest 2", the game gets more intense and struggles to hold 40 FPS in battles.

The power draw was around the 10W-13W range, although some maps towards the end of the game can hit 15W, and temperatures were around 55C. So expect around 4 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and 3 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

Knights in Tight Spaces isn't very accessible, besides disabling blood and making certain environmental hazards stand out more.

Conclusion:

Knights in Tight Spaces does pretty much everything right for a tactical deck-builder. It has many cards, presents information clearly to the player, and has various difficulty options to make the game balanced for everyone. The RNG of drawing cards can be a little frustrating, but it's all part of the game and is a small issue compared to the fun that can be had here.

Performance on Steam Deck isn't the best considering how the game is presented, but it's still perfectly playable, and if you can overlook some small text, you can have a great time playing Knights in Tight Spaces on your Steam Deck.

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

Two Point Museum was provided by SEGA for review. Thank you!

Two Point Museum joins other Two Point games, such as Two Point Hospital and Two Point Campus, in the strategy management genre. As the name would suggest, in this one, you're taking charge of Museums, aiming to provide your visitors with the ultimate curated experience. That inherently comes with a problem, though, as museums are stereotypically dull. So, how do you make a game about running a museum have some excitement? Two Point Museum tries to answer that question.

Two Point Museum follows in the footsteps of its predecessors like Two Point Hospital, whose objective is to build up a successful museum by presenting exhibits and designing your museum efficiently. During the campaign, you'll be running several museums, and the game will ask you to jump between them at various points to advance them further and obtain higher star ratings.

Just like Two Point Hospital (and Theme Hospital before it), Two Point Museum brings back the "room" system, but it's a bit different here. "Rooms" aren't the focus anymore. You're running a museum, so you focus on organizing spaces that flow naturally and provide enough space for some rather huge exhibits. The room system here is pretty much reserved for souvenir shops, private staff areas, and toilets.

This change does, however, work in this game's favor. You aren't always organizing your available space into squares or rectangles anymore, so you can be much more creative when presenting your exhibits. You could even remove most walls and have a large open exhibition center if that's your style, or simply use some basic rope partitions to guide your visitors.

The strategy element of the game comes from placing "Info Boards" and other decorations that can create "Buzz" around your exhibits, effectively leveling them up and making them more appealing to visitors. This means that you'll have to plan where your exhibits are placed and where you can place info boards to get the most effective placements. It's not the end of the world if you aren't "optimal", as the Info Boards and decorations are cheap, but it's cool that the mechanic is there to promote some form of organized building.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Two Point Museum is the expedition system. New exhibits to display don't just show up at your doorstep. Instead, you'll need to hire experts in various fields, as well as other staff, to go out in search of the next big thing to show off in your museum. Random events can happen during expeditions that can affect the outcome, and you can use items to enhance the outcome or protect your crew from any unexpected surprises.

At the end of the expedition, your crew will return with a crate containing an exhibit. It could be an extra part of an existing exhibit, such as another part of a skeleton, or a smaller, stand-alone exhibit. Either way, the game enters a "lootbox-esque" opening cutscene when you reveal what's in the crate, which aims to build some excitement, and it does a decent job of doing it, although it can sometimes be hard to muster up excitement about finding a tail.

The game has a decent number of exhibits, and it can be interesting to see what you get each time. You can send your experts off to different areas, which will yield different results. Some will give you prehistoric exhibits, others botanical and marine life. Unfortunately, many of the exhibits are "joke" exhibits, such as the "Disk Fossil," which is just a floppy disk embedded in some dirt. Clownfish have actual red clown noses on them, and Starfish wear sunglasses.

While I get that the Two Point games lean into being humorous, the whole thing just feels like they're trying too hard, and it feels out of place in a museum environment to have all these comical but silly designs mixed in with real ones.

Unfortunately, the "humor" of the game let me down. While games like Theme Hospital kicked it all off by having tannoy announcers make humorous quips about situations in the hospital, Two Point Museum attempts to carry this forward into the museum environment, and it just falls a bit flat.

The announcer and radio DJ make fairly constant jokes that quickly get repetitive and just aren't very funny anyway. They might appeal to some, but I found myself disabling the voices in the game pretty quickly. Thankfully, the voice volume is separate from all other volume sliders in the game, so you can disable them without affecting the rest of the game.

The game also seems to be incredibly easy. There are no difficulty options, and I never encountered a point where I was actually losing money. I found myself pretty much not paying attention to the money I had while I built my museums, as cost never really became an issue for me.

I also ran into a couple of bugs while I was playing. For example, at one point, another staff member came to take over a ticket stand, and the staff member they took over from got trapped in the ticket stand and couldn't leave because the other staff member was in the way. This led to them being unable to fulfill their needs and threatening to resign. It could be resolved by simply picking up and moving the staff member manually, but I shouldn't have needed to do that.

Two Point Museum is an interesting concept. It's a brave move to take something stereotypically dull and make a game out of it. Do I find it as interesting as a hospital simulator? No, I don't. But the museum angle does open up some new gameplay mechanics, and for those who have been yearning for a museum simulator, you finally have one.

Two Point Museum - Steam Deck Performance

Two Point Museum works really well on the Steam Deck, with full controller support and support for 1280x800 resolution, removing any black borders. It's also pretty easy-going with requirements, with the CPU being the main issue rather than the GPU here.

As we have some flexibility in the settings for this one, I'm offering two presets: one focused on battery life and the other on visual fidelity.

Prioritize Quality Settings - 40 FPS

If you want your floors to look extra shiny and your displays to be gleaming, then you might want to take a look at these settings. They're more demanding on battery life, but do give you a nicer presentation.

In SteamOS, you'll want to set a 40 FPS Frame Limit and set your TDP Limit to 10W.

For graphical settings, you can see the side panel or click the images below, but we are sticking pretty close to the Medium preset here.

We can hold a steady 40 FPS with these settings and we get some pretty nice visuals to boot. We do have the occasional stutter, but it's not anything that's particularly noticeable or affects the gameplay.

Power draw with these settings goes up a notch, so expect around 12W-15W drain on the battery. Temperatures were again around 60C-65C. You can expect about 3.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and around 2-2.5 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Battery Life Build - 30 FPS

To maximize your battery life, you'll want to set a 30 FPS Frame Limit in SteamOS, along with a 7W TDP Limit.

For graphical settings, we keep the same as those in the settings above, with the exception of setting Screen Space Reflections to "Off."

At these settings, the game pretty much held 30 FPS. There could be occasional frame drops when something new loaded and a few stutters here and there, but general gameplay was stable.

The power draw for this one was around 10W-11W, with temperatures of about 60-65C. Expect around 4.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and 3 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

Two Point Museum has some accessibility options. Importantly for Steam Deck, it has a UI Scale option, which you should set to large, making some difficult-to-read text slightly more legible. You can also disable camera shaking and certain flashing light effects in the game.

Subtitles can be enabled for certain flavor text, like the tannoy announcer.

Conclusion:

Two Point Museum is brave in that it takes aim at an industry that is usually not regarded as all that interesting and tries to make a fun game out of it. Unfortunately, this was attempted by injecting a lot of "humor," which just didn't pay off for me. I'd have much preferred a more authentic museum experience with real fish and exhibits rather than being hit with a joke-a-minute, which rarely pays off. If you can tolerate the comedy, the gameplay works well and there's still an enjoyable experience to be found here.

That being said, Two Point Museum does run great on the Steam Deck, so if you have had your eye on this one and a bit of silliness doesn't put you off, you shouldn't hesitate to get it to play on your handheld.

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

Heart of the Machine was provided by Hooded Horse for review. Thank you!

This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out at a later date.

As an Early Access title, gameplay and performance is subject to change.

Indie publisher Hooded Horse is one of my favorite game publishers, and Heart of the Machine is another fascinating title under their umbrella. Developed by Arcen Games, Heart of the Machine is surprisingly ambitious for a turn-based 4X title. I love games that push boundaries and the genre they represent, and while that endeavor comes with a steep learning curve, I am enthralled by this game.

Set in a brutal cyberpunk world, Heart of the Machine takes place in a crumbling city filled with criminal gangs and ordinary folk trying to survive. Players take on the role of an illegal sentient AI who escapes their lab and is forced to take shelter in the city.

With unimaginable potential and learning what it means to be alive, Heart of the Machine guides players through an extensive narrative. Early Access can mean many things in the industry, with launch builds ranging from a barebones experience to a ‘fully playable’ game needing further polish. For this title, players can play the prologue, Chapter One, and a large chunk of Chapter Two. It might not sound like much content, but this is an incredibly complex game that will make the content worthwhile.

Chapter One is an extensive tutorial, and the gameplay loop gradually reveals itself to the player. You set up a Network Tower as a base of operations and develop structures to bolster your processing power while recruiting androids you find in the procedurally generated city. Androids can be used to scout and find spots to investigate to further your growth, but be warned that Gang Members around the city can attack and steal their gear.

All units have a movement point system that replenishes every turn, but I like how everyone shares the action point system (mental energy in this game), so you have to be cautious when planning. Moving androids around the map also uses up an action point, and in the beginning, you have limited power while trying to survive.

I recommend playing the tutorial. It guides players through the gameplay loop, but it took me a while to scratch the surface, even with the in-game codex. Despite its complexity, Heart of the Machine is one of the more accessible 4X games I have played. It takes time to learn the tricks, but it is fairly easy to wrap your head around. I appreciate how Arcen Games also eases you into the gameplay, with mechanics and abilities gradually opening up the more you play so you don't get overwhelmed.

Chapter Two is when the game takes the training wheels off, and the full scale of the game sinks in. Even while you’re scrambling about developing your city, there are devastating Doom events that will strike the city and must be prepared for. The default mode gives more time to explore and experiment, but there are higher difficulty modes if you fancy an even more significant challenge. A Final Doom is the ‘endgame’ to fight against, but it is not the end even if you fail.

The difficulty ramps up after the first power grid is built and you receive your first narrative decisions. Many choices are offered to you that shape the narrative, and it is deeply compelling. It is around this time that the first severe attack on your Network Tower begins, and it initially caught me completely off guard.

Buildings get destroyed quickly, and after a certain amount of damage, they will stop working until they are repaired. My first significant battle with enemy forces became a hilarious struggle as I desperately moved my team of androids back to the Network Tower to protect my fledgling empire. I got pasted, so I had to reload a save from a few turns before moving more androids back to my base in preparation. Lesson learned!

I appreciate the visual design. The sprawling city might lack finer details; you won’t see the streets crawling with people going about their lives, but the cyberpunk ambiance is fitting. Cars trundle down roads and fly over the city, and military forces occupy fortified map sections. It does not sound imposing, but Heart of the Machine looks nicer than many 4X games, and the soundtrack is great, too.

The number of things to keep track of in Heart of the Machine is immense, and the game’s complexity will not be for everyone. If the tutorial were not as intuitive as it is, I would find the game too obtuse, even for veteran 4X players. For example, I spent hours wondering how to increase my Android capacity until I discovered forming a Shell company did that, and I found nothing in the tuition that mentioned it. However, I can happily say it isn't like that, and it was digestible enough to understand the mechanics.

Heart of the Machine - Steam Deck Performance

Arcen Games has paid much attention to making Heart of the Machine work on the Steam Deck, and the overall experience is solid. However, a couple of things hold it back.

While full controller support is not yet implemented, Arcen Games has set up a default controller profile that works well. The interface is also surprisingly easy to read with how many menus you can access, but the amount of information available on screen can make navigating challenging.

Recommended Settings

The number of graphical options you can tweak in the Heart of the Machine is enormous. However, there is a dedicated Steam Deck graphics preset already in the game, and this is the one I used. With stock settings and an untouched TDP, the performance was stable across the board.

This is quite the ambitious 4X game regarding controls and visuals. In this game, you can adjust the camera in many angles, and the city has a lot of action going on in default mode. While the game stayed at 60 FPS most of the time in standard settings, I saw a couple of frame dips when zooming out or during combat with several enemies simultaneously. These drops weren’t frequent and happen on more powerful hardware, regardless. I lowered the FPS cap to 40 with a 40hz refresh rate and found that to be the most stable profile.

With all the effects happening on screen, I should not have been surprised by the power draw, but it did nonetheless. With these settings, I found an average power draw of 17 watts, especially when you progress further in Chapter One and beyond. It often spiked as high as 20 watts during more cluttered scenery. When playing with my recommended settings, you should expect roughly two and a half hours of battery life on the LCD Steam Deck.

Battery Saver Settings

There are some ways to improve battery life. Reducing the number of vehicles that roam the map on screen helps, but we can do more. Turn-based games usually get away with a lower framerate than other titles, so I experimented with TDP settings.

With a 40hz refresh rate, Heart of the Machine still requires some power to run smoothly. Even when I changed the graphics preset to Very Low, I needed at least a TDP of 5 to maintain stable frames. At minimum settings, the visuals are rather blurred and muddy, but it lowered the average power draw to 13 watts, which is a significant drop.

Until we see some performance patches during Heart of the Machine’s post-launch, this is probably the best we can manage for battery life. By sacrificing framerate and some visual quality, you can gain an average of an hour of battery life while maintaining acceptable performance.

Accessibility

The game is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Usually, we list all the accessibility settings available, but there are so many options that I barely know where to begin! There is colorblind support through high-visibility unit colors, larger NPC hitboxes when targeting, toggle screen shake, freely change and toggle all the interfaces on and off, change camera sensitivity, and toggle Vsync.

You can also change the font size, toggle a few different font styles, and change the line spacing. There is more than what I have listed here, but Heart of the Machine’s accessibility settings should be the golden standard from now on.

Conclusion

Heart of the Machine’s ambition and complexity is a breath of fresh air for better and worse. Whenever I thought I had scratched the surface of what was on offer, the game opened up further. The bigger surprise is how well all these mechanics blend, and I have not had this much fun learning a 4X strategy game in years.

However, this is not a game for inexperienced players. The learning curve is steep even for a 4X game, and I have struggled despite my experience with strategy titles. The tutorials and codex go a long way towards making the game not feel obtuse, but it is still a ton of information to digest. The Steam performance is good, but watch out for the high power consumption. This is one early-access game to be excited about, and I can't wait to see how it develops!

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

Ballionaire was provided by Raw Fury for review. Thank you!

Ballionaire seems to be an indie hit that came out of nowhere. Having launched in December 2024, I quickly started hearing about the game in various places, so I was excited to be offered the chance to review the game on the Steam Deck now. Spoilers: this game is a great one to play on the go on your Steam Deck.

Ballionaire presents itself as an "autobonker", with the aim of building the perfect Pachinko machine. You're given a new object to place on each drop, where you must create the best combos and synergies to accumulate the most money possible in as few drops as you can.

The objects you can place on the pachinko board vary wildly. From simple bouncy objects that grant you money for each "bonk", to "carryables" that your ball can pick up, and then deposit at another object on the board for a reward. There are even objects that spawn more balls when you hit them or objects that "age" and offer a reward if they reach a certain age before being bonked by your ball.

All of these mechanics create a complex and strategic experience. You have to think about what objects will work well together (called synergies in the game). For example, placing a campfire that can spawn fireballs next to a candle, which doubles the value of surrounding objects when lit, is a surefire way to get some extra money. Placing a caterpillar which, if left unbonked for five drops, turns into a butterfly which functions as an extra ball every drop can be really useful. But you'll need to place it in a position where it won't get hit, but also still be useful when it turns into a ball every drop.

The aim of the game is to accumulate as much money as possible. You have to pay tribute to the game's ELDERS, whose demands will increase exponentially on your run, meaning you will start small but need some killer combos to satisfy their demands as the run progresses. Each time you satisfy an ELDERS' demands, you can activate a "boon" that will change the game rules, such as modifying gravity or giving you a cash injection after every drop.

There are over 125 objects and 50 boons that you'll be able to use in the game, including some that are locked at first but can be unlocked by a, you guessed it, gacha machine. Fortunately, all the unlocks are done with in-game currency, so no micro-transactions or real-world money are involved here.

You'll also have five boards to play on, ranging from a simple Pyramid structure to more diverse layouts such as a rotating wheel or a slot machine. Each one requires a different strategy due to the layout of the pins and where you can place objects.

This helps the replayability of Ballionaire, because while the game can be finished in just a few hours, you could have a lot of fun finding new strategies and ways to maximize your income. Sadly, the game seems to lack any sort of online leaderboards, which seems to be a missed opportunity and could have been a fairly easy addition.

On several occasions, the controls were a little temperamental, with the d-pad or analog stick not selecting the pin I wanted to place an object on. Fortunately, the right analog stick allows fine cursor control, and you can select it that way.

Visually, the game is fairly pleasant, with a vibrant and sometimes psychedelic art style. It's an interesting one, but not bad by any means. The sounds are good for that serotonin release, having plenty of "bonk" sound effects as your balls hit various objects. It' i's complete with pretty forgettable and fairly non-descript background music, for better or worse.

Ballionaire is a solid title. If you are a fan of pachinko and watching virtual numbers flash up on your screen, indicating you're earning big bucks, then Ballionaire should be on your radar. The game only has 5 boards, but it has various difficulty levels and mod support, and for the MSRP price tag of $12.34, you should easily get a few hours of enjoyment out of this one.

Ballionaire - Steam Deck Performance

Ballionaire is close to a flawless experience on the Steam Deck. The only issue I noticed with the game is that it doesn't support 1280x800 as a resolution, meaning you will get some black bars along the top and bottom of the screen.

The controls are perfect, allowing you to play the game with the gamepad. Ballionaire doesn't have graphical settings, as the game simply doesn't need any.

On my Steam Deck OLED, I could run the game at 90 FPS and get a power draw of around 7-8W, or you can lower that to 60 FPS to drop that another 1W or so. Steam Deck OLED users can easily get 7 hours of playtime from Ballionaire. Steam Deck LCD owners should expect around 4-5 hours. As the game doesn't benefit from 90 FPS, I played at 60 FPS and ran with a TDP Limit of 5W, which seemed to hold a solid 60 the entire time.

Accessibility:

Ballionaire has no accessibility options, although it could be argued that it doesn't need any. Every object is clearly defined regardless of color, the text is quite easy to read even on the Steam Deck's display, and the controls are simple and always displayed on-screen.

Conclusion:

Ballionaire is a fun take on the standard Pachinko format. With a variety of objects you can place on your board, it opens up an endless variety of strategies you can employ. Couple that with the randomness of being unable to choose which objects you can place, which means that Ballionaire can keep you entertained for far longer than you might initially assume. The only thing lacking, which I'm surprised by, is the fact that the game has no leaderboard support.

That, coupled with the fact that the game plays incredibly well on the Steam Deck, offering long battery life and a smooth and pain-free experience, means that Ballionarie earns our "Best on Deck" badge for being a game that you should check out on your Steam Deck.

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

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo was provided by THQ Nordic for review. Thank you!

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo is a very intriguing title, unlike any other strategy game I've played before, and I've played my fair share of the Civilization franchise. Still, while SpellForce: Conquest of Eo shares some similarities, it's a unique experience that is easy to understand while offering a lot of complexity.

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo is split into campaigns, either the Path of the Circle or the Origins campaigns, which can be played on pre-made maps or a randomly generated one, with a few shorter scenarios you can play through on procedurally generated maps. While this is the only content in the game, the campaigns are long, several hours each, and you could replay the campaigns and scenarios due to the random generation in the game.

At first, SpellForce: Conquest of Eo might look like another Civilization clone, but it differs greatly in how you play the game. Sure, you play on a hex grid map with borders around your base that you can gather resources within, but that's where the similarities end. In SpellForce, you merely have control of 1 tower, which functions similarly to a city in Civilization, providing a few spaces of borders around it, determining who owns the resources and structures in that area.

You can expand your area of influence through a few means, such as casting spells at certain points on the map that can be activated to create a border around them or by using a special unit to place a Lodge, which also provides borders and lets you claim control of the land. Ultimately, SpellForce is much more about acquiring resources to build your armies and make your Tower (your main base) more powerful by crafting more rooms and unlocking its full potential, and in that way, it differs from many other 4X strategy games.

There's also a heavy focus on questlines. It's not just about defeating your enemies in combat. Throughout the world map, there will be neutral parties that you can interact with, either giving them your aid in exchange for allegiance or forcing them to join you. These can bolster your strength, giving you an advantage against opposing factions. This gives SpellForce an almost "RPG-like" quality, where you are advancing a plot while gaining power and influence.

There are also various structures on the map, like Goblin Camps, where you can hire Goblins if you own the camp, Watchtowers that reveal large portions of the nearby area, and neutral cities, which can offer quests and several other map elements like harvestable resources if you have a unit with the worker skill with you.

When facing an opponent in combat, the game switches to a more tactical view, zooming in from the overworld to a more detailed hex-grid of the local area. This allows you to move individual units on the battlefield in turn-based tactical strategy. While these battles are interesting, with various abilities available to use and tactical positioning required, they do take a rather significant amount of time, usually a few minutes, for a single battle. So unless it's a tight battle that you want to control manually, you'll probably want to auto-resolve most battles when you have a clear advantage, and let the game simulate the fight.

There are various other classes, or archetypes, that you can choose from, such as Alchemists who can craft potions to boost their troops, Artificers who can create glyphs to upgrade their troops, and Demonologist who uses the power of demons to fuel their empires. Each uses a similar system but tends to lean into different playstyles, so there's a choice depending on how you like to play these strategy games.

In my playthrough, I chose to use the Necromancer. This archetype lets you build a room in your tower that you can use to create new monsters to fight for you without upkeep cost. This uses a unique system where the resources you collect on the map have values assigned to them, allowing you to combine various resources with a "soul" to create new types of monsters. It's a really innovative mechanic and a nice surprise in a strategy game like this.

Each of these archetypes also affects the spells you can cast, which are abilities you can use on the overworld map every few turns that can have drastic effects on the world, such as expanding influence or altering a unit in some way. And if you want to really specialize, you can create your own archetype to suit your playstyle, choosing which pages of the Grimoire you want access to, which affects the spells you can cast.

As for presentation, the game is quite pleasing to look at, although nothing particularly impressive. Other strategy games definitely surpass SpellForce in the visuals department. However, that's never really been a key point for strategy games, so it's by no means a big deal. It's certainly not a bad-looking game.

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo is an interesting and unique strategy game. While there is base-building and expansion of borders, a lot of the focus is placed on quests and the gathering of resources to expand and improve your army, moving from one major plot point to another to advance the story. This makes it stand out as unique in the turn-based strategy genre, and it's a game you should check out if you want a campaign-driven strategy.

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo - Steam Deck Performance

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo supports 1280x800 as a resolution, so we don't get any black borders on the Steam Deck. It also has great controller support for a strategy game, so once you get used to the controls, it's perfectly controllable with just your Steam Deck controller.

Recommended Settings - 30 FPS

Set the SteamOS frame rate limit to 30 and no TDP limit.

For this preset, we use the standard settings used by SpellForce: Conquest of Eo when you start it: pretty much everything on High and Anti-Aliasing on SMAA. This gives you great visual quality, and the battery life isn't too bad if we limit it to 30 FPS.

Here are the settings used for reference:

At these settings, the game generally stays at 30 FPS, although at one point, I did encounter a sustained drop to 24 FPS for several seconds for no discernable reason. This seems pretty rare, though, so you should expect a stable framerate.

The power draw is in the middle of the road, mostly holding around 12-17W of battery drain. So you could get around 2-2.5 hours from a Steam Deck LCD and around 3.5 hours of play from a Steam Deck OLED.

Temperatures stayed reasonable, around 60-65C, occasionally getting close to 70C, but the fan never really ramped up.

If you want to increase the battery life a little, you can lower the Shadows and Anti Aliasing to "Low" and "Off," respectively. This lowers your power draw to the 10-14W range, giving you an extra hour or so of battery life.

Accessibility:

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo has text size options, and I'd recommend you set both Font Scale and Tooltip Scale to 120% as it makes the text easier to read on the Steam Deck. There are also ample tutorials that explain the majority of the mechanics in the game, even down to moving units.

Conclusion:

SpellForce: Conquest of Eo is a unique and interesting turn-based strategy. While the focus might not be as much on expanding your empire as it is in games like Civilization, the focus instead of questlines, story, and the world's lore enriches the game and places it in another category altogether. If you're a fan of turn-based strategy and tactical turn-based battles, SpellForce: Conquest of EO might just be the game for you.

As a bonus, SpellForce: Conquest of Eo works flawlessly on the Steam Deck, with a good control scheme and the ability to run the game at 30 FPS with no issues.

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

Planet Coaster 2 was provided by Frontier Developments for review. Thank you!

It's hard to believe that it's been over 8 years since the original Planet Coaster hit our screens in 2016, and it's time for the long-awaited sequel, Planet Coaster 2. I was understandably excited for this next installment of the series, but when it launched, it received a very mixed reception from the player base. However, I am very glad I got to try it for myself.

Planet Coaster 2 does stick rather closely to the basics introduced 8 years ago. You are building a theme park, and a lot of the mechanics that were in the original, such as designing your own rides, building paths, making sure your guests are cared for, and staffing your park, are all here.

These mechanics work pretty well. There's a good variety of rides and objects for you to place, with this iteration adding additional rides by allowing players to build water parks. You're able to design your own pool and wave machines and even create a flume that guests can use to slide down into a suitable pool from somewhere else in the park. It's pretty neat and what you'd want in a game that aims to become the ultimate park simulator.

While many of you will probably dive straight into the sandbox mode to build your park just how you want it, Planet Coaster 2 has a fairly decent campaign/scenario mode, with voice-acted characters that will guide you through the basics of designing and running a park, into more challenging objectives later on. I normally don't do the scenarios in these games, but I enjoyed trying them out.

The game also has difficulty options that allow you to tailor the difficulty to your needs, from a fairly easy-going level where it's hard to go bankrupt to a more challenging one that tasks you with having some thought behind each investment you make into a ride.

So this all sounds very well and good. Planet Coaster 2 takes the base of Planet Coaster 1, with its ability to create any theme park you want, with a huge variety of scenery props, custom-designed coasters, a neat pathing system, and turn it up a notch with the addition of water-themed rides and some snazzy new graphics. So what's the issue exactly?

The problems that caused player backlash might be good for Steam Deck users. Firstly, there was an issue regarding the control method for PC players. The game has a UI designed for controllers, and yes, it is more of a console UI, even on the PC platform. While I can imagine that's frustrating for mouse + keyboard players, it works in Steam Deck's favor and makes the menus much easier to navigate.

Secondly, the game currently limits you to 6,000 guests in your park. While that may seem like a lot, bigger parks could have several thousand more guests than that and still function fine. The problem is that the Steam Deck likely wouldn't function. The more guests in your park, the more resource-intensive it becomes, and as you'll see in my performance analysis later in this review, having more than 6,000 guests could pose real problems for playability. The developers are removing this limit for PC players in December, so we'll see if that causes performance issues in the future.

Beyond that, there are some issues currently with AI pathfinding, and I struggled with guests saying they couldn't find a way to ride when the ride was connected to a path right next to them. The staffing system is also a little confusing and isn't explained well, so it would be nice if a tutorial is added explaining how to manage staff (although they do 90% manage themselves), as right now, the tutorial says to "place the staff." Particularly, mechanics seem to have a few bugs associated with them.

By default, the game also allows you to be very liberal with where you place objects, which I disliked. It allows you to place paths through trees and other scenery objects, which makes it look terrible. Fortunately, there's a toggle for whether collisions apply to each type of object, so if you want a nice-looking park, you should consider enabling these extra options.

So, Planet Coaster 2 has its ups and downs. At its core, it's an improvement over Planet Coaster 1 in various ways. Still, the game does have its fair share of bugs, and I can understand some of the limitations the developers have put in place due to the game being on consoles, which is somewhat frustrating for regular PC players.

The developers do seem to be hard at work fixing these issues. However, with a planned changelog for the December patch already released, it's clear the developers know they have work ahead of them, and it's good to see them being fairly transparent with the community.

Would I recommend you dive in and purchase Planet Coaster 2? Well, the price is quite reasonable by today's standards. If you can live with a couple of frustrating bugs and a slightly questionable UI for PC players, then you'll likely get much enjoyment out of this game. It would be my top recommendation for a theme park simulator right now, even though there isn't too much competition in the space.

Planet Coaster 2 - Steam Deck Performance

Planet Coaster 2 fully supports the Steam Deck's 1280x800 resolution, and unusually for a strategy/management game, the controller support is excellent. This is likely a side effect of the game launching on consoles on day one.

The game also offers a Steam Deck preset for its graphics settings, which sets most settings pretty low, except Water, which is put on High for some reason. This is a pretty optimized preset, in my opinion, giving you decent visual quality without affecting the frame rate too much.

Recommended Settings - 30 FPS

If we set the SteamOS frame rate limit to 60, the game will auto-limit us to 30 FPS, and then we don't want a TDP Limit.

I know using the game's built-in Steam Deck preset is a bit boring. But we always ask developers to optimize their games for the Deck, and when they give us a preset that produces good results, I'm all for using it.

In case the preset disappears into the ether for whatever reason, here are the exact settings I'm using and what I found gave the best results overall:

As I said, at first, it might appear like these settings leave too much performance overhead, and you might think we can bump up the graphics for some extra quality. As your park expands and more guests flood in, the game stresses the CPU, and your FPS will quickly plummet. Running a park with 4,700 guests (the max is 6,000 right now), the Steam Deck couldn't reach 30 FPS, mostly running in the 23-27 FPS range, regardless of any graphics settings being used.

The difference between the game's Steam Deck preset and the absolute lowest graphics at this stage was about 2-3 FPS, and with that, you lose resolution quality, reflections, and shadows entirely. So it makes sense to use their preset, as it allows you some visual niceties at almost no performance cost, as the burden is entirely on the CPU by this point in the game.

The power draw stays roughly similar whether you have a large park, with a range of around 19W-21W. Expect about 1.5-2 hours of battery life from an LCD model and 2.5 hours from an OLED model.

Temperatures are on the higher end but still within reason, around 65C-70C and occasionally jumping into the low 70s.

Accessibility:

Planet Coaster 2 has a few accessibility options. You can adjust the interface scale—the max is 100%, which is acceptable on the Deck's display. You can also apply a colorblind filter, mute other audio when narration is playing, and switch the sound to mono, which is useful if you are hearing impaired in one ear. The game does have HDR compatibility as well.

Conclusion:

Planet Coaster 2 isn't revolutionary, but it builds upon the success of Planet Coaster 1, with some neat additions such as Water Parks and some extra variety to what you can build. For what you get, I would say the price is reasonable. Yes, there are some rough edges right now, but these aren't serious dealbreakers and are fixable, so I would still recommend this game to anyone looking for a park builder.

Steam Deck performance is middling. Yes, the control scheme works really well for a controller, and there is a Steam Deck preset given in the graphics menu, but the CPU load is pretty heavy, and as you start to get thousands of guests, you will have to accept playing at 20-25 FPS. When the guest limit of 6,000 gets removed in December, I could see serious performance issues for Steam Deck players if the game isn't optimized more, so it's something to be aware of.

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

A copy was provided by Stardock Entertainment for review. Thank you!

Returning for a long-awaited sequel, Sins of a Solar Empire 2 might leave fans of the franchise somewhat divided in their opinion. That's not to say that Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a bad game, but more so that it perhaps sticks too close to the original to the point where players might feel a bit cheated.

At first glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is the same game as the original, were it not for the re-designed and slimmed-down UI, the games themselves look incredibly similar. Not to mention the two games share identical ship and station designs, as well as technologies. I even went back to look at the original game and found that some of the voice lines, when you order a ship to move, are identical between the two games as well.

There are some differences, however. The most noticeable improvement in my eyes is the visual effects. Effects such as explosions and certain weapon effects definitely look improved in the sequel compared to the original, and if you zoom in on the ships (which you don't do too often, but it's an option) they are much higher quality than before.

The UI change isn't just aesthetic in appearance too, the UI is functionally different, and dare I say, a bit smarter too. It makes managing your empire a little easier when things start getting spread out and queuing up ships and structure construction well in advance is a breeze compared to a lot of other strategy games that I've played.

SoaSE2Stock2 — *The UI is more streamlined than the original game, with fewer chunky buttons and nested menus to reduce clutter.*

As Sins of a Solar Empire 2 follows the original so closely, it at least manages to be a good game to play, with fairly well-balanced factions and plenty of technologies to research, ships and structures to build, and careful strategic planning. The phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" springs to mind, although I'm not sure how much that applies to a game you've waited 15 years for.

Not many games let you go against each other with huge fleets of spaceships, and I view it as a sort of "Stellaris-lite." It's laid out similarly, and you can still have the epic space battles. You just don't have to worry about all the planetary economies and politics as much. Victories will largely be decided by who has the biggest gun here. It's a much simpler approach that anyone can understand.

While your economy is important, it's very much an "upgrade and forget" kind of affair here. You don't need to keep checking in on your planets to see if they're still managed properly and if you're getting the best out of them; it's all flat rates of income determined by the planet's upgrade level.

Ship types, while the same as the previous Sins game, are also diverse and add a lot of variety to how battles play out and look. With fast strike craft launched from your carriers, corvettes outmaneuvering capital ships, frigates holding back to lay siege, and your capital ships taking the brunt of the fire, there are a lot of strategies to employ depending on how you choose to compose your fleet, and the battles are an enjoyable visual spectacle.

Unfortunately, my grievances with Sins of a Solar Empire 2 aren't just limited to how it's so similar to the original from 2008. Sins of a Solar Empire 2 lacks a single-player campaign, so the only modes available in this $50 game are multiplayer deathmatches and deathmatches against the AI on either premade maps or randomly generated ones for 2-10 players. A single-player campaign is in the works, but it's being released as paid DLC or as part of the Content Pass, which costs $60 for the campaign, some scenarios, 6 new ships, and a 4th faction.

It's an outrageous price for something that should be included in the base game. But apparently, we're charging $60 for a new faction and a campaign these days.

That sums up how I feel about Sins of a Solar Empire 2. Is it a good strategy game that's fun and worth looking at? I had a blast playing the game, and I'm glad I got a chance to check it out. But if you already own the original, is it worth the $50 to upgrade? I'm not so sure. You get a few nice visual improvements, a sleeker UI, and probably some improvements to things like the online gameplay, but content-wise, the game is almost identical to Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity/Rebellion.

That's not to mention that the main draw for returning players is likely the single-player campaign and 4th faction, both of which will be sold as paid DLC and not included in the base game, which is a shame.

Sins of a Solar Empire II - Steam Deck Performance

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 generally runs very well on the Steam Deck. It supports the Steam Deck's native 1280x800 resolution, and although it doesn't have any controller support, it uses fairly generic RTS controls, so the default Keyboard (WASD) + Mouse layout works pretty well with it. The game's system requirements state 1920x1080 is the minimum resolution, but this is more so given the recommended UI scale; the Steam Deck has to run at 67% UI scaling due to this, but it's still playable, if a little small.

The game is surprisingly easy to run, although perhaps not so surprising given how similar it is to its 16-year-old predecessor. Therefore, I'm only offering 1 preset today.

Recommended Settings - 60 FPS

I would recommend you apply a 60 FPS limit in SteamOS, along with a 10W TDP Limit.

In-game, I disabled the Variable Frame Rate, kept Bloom and Refraction enabled disabled Antialiasing, kept Shadows enabled and on "High," kept Dynamic Lighting enabled and on "High," set Effect Counts to "High," and then disabled the Use Only Dark Skybox. You can see the images below if you want the settings in that form.

My game ran at 60 FPS most of the time in these settings. Certain situations did cause dips, such as when fleets were warping between systems or when I was in a large battle with 100+ ships. These could cause drops into the 50s, and some rare effects drop the performance down to the 30s, but they don't appear too often. Given the type of game this is, the game is perfectly playable even at 30 FPS.

Also, the game has a habit of freezing for 1-2 seconds at times, likely due to the excessive amount of VRAM it uses (around 8GB). This usually occurs when zooming in/out, but it can also occur when a lot of visual effects are spawning.

The pictures in the gallery below show some of the most intensive moments I experienced during play.

The power draw stays pretty low, with the game drawing around 10W-14W most of the time. You can expect around 3-3.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck LCD and about 4.5 hours from a Steam Deck OLED.

Temperatures stay low in the 55C-60C range, with no audible fan noise.

Accessibility:

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 doesn't have any accessibility options. There isn't even support for color-blind users, and ships do not have symbols/shapes attached to them to determine what faction they belong to, which may present some issues. The game does feature UI scaling, but it's disabled on the Steam Deck, as the game technically only supports 1920x1080 or above resolutions for UI scaling.

Conclusion:

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a solid RTS, although that's to be expected considering how closely it follows its predecessor, a well-received game in the strategy genre. There are a few niceties added to this "sequel", such as a redesigned UI, but it perhaps would have been more accurate to call this game a remaster as opposed to an entirely new game. The $50 price tag is a little hard to swallow given how close it is to the original, and the single-player campaign being paid DLC instead of being included in the base game just adds salt to the wound.

As for how the game works on the Steam Deck, for the most part, it runs pretty well, the performance is great aside from the occasional freezes, and the controls also work decently. However, you may not want to attempt playing online like this, as mouse + keyboard players will be able to act faster than you. You do feel somewhat limited with how fast you can click buttons, as Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is a fairly fast-paced game as far as strategy games go.

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

Railroad Corporation 2 was provided by Iceberg Interactive for review. Thank you!

Railroad Corporation 2 was in Early Access at the time of this review, so content and performance is subject to change.

The transport logistics genre has been going strong for over 30 years now, and I've been a huge fan of it ever since playing Transport Tycoon as a kid on my Windows 95 PC. I'm glad to say that while Railroad Corporation 2 isn't quite as large in scope as something like Transport Tycoon, but it still handles itself well.

The basic premise here is simple: build a functioning (and profitable) railroad network that ferries vital goods between towns and cities to expand further and thus open up further transport routes so you can earn even more money. It's all very capitalist and a perfect setting for a business management game.

Railroad Corporation 2 has a campaign mode with objectives spread across four chapters (or missions). They're all pretty similar, just with a different map and set of objectives to accomplish. You also have the option to play in the sandbox mode, where you build a profitable network without objectives.

Here is where the Early Access nature of the game stands out. There are no adjustable settings for either mode. The campaign will have difficulty options in the full release; however, "Normal" is the only option. Sandbox mode is also set to allow AI opponents and adjustable map sizes and biomes. Right now, there are no AI opponents in the game, the map size is fixed to be "Medium" with about 20-25 towns on the map, and the only biome is snowy.

Thankfully, once you're in the game, there's a decent amount to keep you busy. There's a good variety of resources and production chains for you to get your head around, requiring the creation of reasonably complex and well-thought-out railroad networks. Whiskey Distilleries, for example, need both glass and grain shipped to them before they can output whiskey, which larger cities desire. So you'll need to build a station next to the distillery, find nearby industries that produce grain and glass, create a train route to supply the distillery, and then a further train to take the whiskey produced to a city.

There are plenty of other resources, including logs, planks, paper, flour, bread, quartz, and more. It'll take you a while to familiarize yourself with all the resources and the production chains they're used in, but for the most part, the resources are used to produce more valuable resources, which are then shipped to cities, which allow them to grow. Bigger cities have more plots of land available to buy, and when you buy a plot of land, you can build further industries on that land to open up more potential trade routes or expand the city itself to make it more profitable.

Railroad Corporation 2 also has an interesting mechanic where your trains must purchase the commodities they pick up before transporting them and selling them for profit. Still, if you don't have enough money to purchase the cargo, the train will simply "pause" at its position, even when the money becomes available, which is terribly obnoxious. The game could do with an option to resume the route when money becomes available automatically.

The game's construction element is pretty basic, but it gets the job done. You can build stations beside towns and industries within their "catchment area" to pick up and drop off goods. These stations can be upgraded with facilities that allow you to buy trains, repair trains, refuel faster, etc.

Railroads are constructed using a spline system, where you can just place nodes, and it'll build your railroad along the path following the nodes. Construction of bridges and tunnels happens automatically when the situation calls for it, but constructing them dramatically increases the cost of the railroad. Seeing your sprawling network grow across the map is basic but also satisfying.

You can also place signals that allow you to manage trains more effectively if multiple trains run on one railroad. I'm not hugely into managing logistics that complex, so my extent of this was mainly managing "crossroads" when rails intersected, as there's no way of bridging over or tunneling under existing railroads. Sometimes, I had more than one railroad join up as they arrived at a station, as stations can only have a maximum of four railroad lines.

In terms of progression, if you aren't playing through the objectives and chapters of the campaign, your progression will mostly come from research. You can hire scientists at your office and assign them to research projects that will unlock new trains and upgrade existing ones.

As for the presentation, the game looks fine. It won't win any awards, but it's decent, and you can zoom very far in to see the trains at a good level of detail. Sounds mostly consist of hearing your trains "panting," at least when dealing with steam trains, and the music track is sort of your generic American Country Rock type of affair, with plenty of guitars in use at the very least.

The game does have an online multiplayer mode, which I wasn't able to test, as there were no games running whenever I checked. So, if you want to play this game with opponents, you'll probably want to organize purchasing the game with friends to try it out.

Where Railroad Corporation 2 is currently lacking, however, is in its quality of life features. There are just some things missing that I would consider as requirements for a game of this genre. For example, there's no way to auto-replace trains when they reach the end of their service life. That means you must constantly check your trains to see if they need to be replaced, as their maximum reliability is always falling as they age.

Another thing that's missing is the yearly profit logs for each train. You get a profit/loss log for each train, but it's over the train's lifetime, not yearly, which means you cannot know if a train has recently become unprofitable. You could be running a train at a loss for years if it had been profitable for a few years prior and have no way of knowing. It's small, but you need access to information like this when you're running a business.

At the end of the day, Railroad Corporation 2 is a pretty solid title. The base mechanics are good, but content-wise, it might be a little lacking right now. With only four missions (although they are fairly lengthy), no AI, and only a snow biome to play in, and with the difficulty being on the easier side, it's hard to lose money.

With the abovementioned issues, I'd recommend you wait a while before diving in unless you've been looking forward to this one. If you are interested in transport management games, put Railroad Corporation 2 on your wishlist, as a few months down the line, this could be one of the best in the genre.

Railroad Corporation 2 - Steam Deck Performance

Railroad Corporation 2 sadly doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, so you'll have black bars at the top and bottom of your screen. The closest resolution we can play at is 1280x720. The game also has no controller support, so you'll need to make a controller layout, or you can use a controller layout I made called "SteamDeckHQ.com Recommended" in the community layouts.

Text is somewhat hard to read in the game, especially regarding commodities on the map. As they aren't rendered as UI elements, they'll get smaller and larger as you zoom in and out. Fortunately, this does mean you can zoom in to read them.

Recommended Settings - 45 FPS

We're setting the SteamOS frame rate limit to 60, and we'll have no TDP Limit here.

In the in-game settings, I selected the "Low" preset and then set the in-game FPS limiter to 45, as using the SteamOS limiter introduces input lag. You can see the settings I used in the image below.

At these settings, the game runs at 45 FPS sometimes, although when scrolling the map, FPS often drops to the low 40s or high 30s. Also, when you build a railroad, the FPS drops depending on how long the railroad you're building is, to the teens if it's very long. Fortunately, as this is a slow-paced, non-reactionary strategy game, the mild drops to around 40 FPS are barely noticeable, and the game remains pleasant to play, except for the drop when building railroads, which can't be avoided.

The power draw generally stays on the lower side, with the game using around 13W-15W for most of the time.

Temperatures also don't get too high, holding around the 65C-70C range for me, there is some fan noise, but it doesn't ramp up and get irritating.

Accessibility:

Railroad Corporation 2 doesn't have any accessibility options right now. This includes no UI Scaling, which is a shame because the game has some hard-to-read text.

Conclusion:

Railroad Corporation 2 is a pretty solid start for an early-access title. There are some rough edges, such as the lack of accessibility options, especially UI Scaling where the Steam Deck is concerned, and just options in general for the game. There are also a number of quality-of-life features that really need to be added soon, such as auto-replacement of trains when they reach the end of their service life and more financial information per train.

For now, I would say put this one on your wishlist and let the developers flesh out their ideas, introduce some AI opponents to make the game more challenging, get a biome other than snow, and add some quality-of-life features. The developer roadmap states that a grass biome will be coming in Q2 2025, but it'll be a long wait until Q4 2025 for any AI opponents, which is a shame. You can always play with up to 4 players in online multiplayer, but you'll likely need friends, as the game was dead online when I checked.

Railroad Corporation 2 runs OK on the Steam Deck. Performance is perfectly acceptable for the kind of game this is, and the controls, while not ideal, do work fine. I would love for additional hotkeys added so we can map them to a controller layout though, as the game is severely lacking hotkeys right now, even on the keyboard. From what I can tell, speeding up the simulation time isn't mapped to a hotkey, nor are any of the menus, meaning we need to use the touchpad as a mouse to navigate all menus.

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

Arco was provided by Panic for review. Thank you!

This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out at a later date.

2024 has seen many fantastic indie titles, and Arco is among them. If you like tactical games with deep world-building, or if you want a challenge, it will sate those taste buds. I like both, and although Arco pushed me to hell and back on the difficulty front, it deserves its Overwhelmingly Positive score on Steam with every juicy mouthful of berries, and it is a great Steam Deck performer.

Arco draws upon Meso-American culture for its world design, blending some fantasy elements into a delicious RPG. After a short prologue, when players grasp the basic mechanics through an integrated story tutorial (and the massacre of your village), the game picks up many years later with you as a grizzled, grumpy old veteran jaded with the world who has to find those responsible for another village massacre. Expect some great plot twists throughout the story to keep you on your toes.

You will navigate the map through small pixel-art locations to get to your destination, where you will find resources for battle or little mini-quests that open up more places on the map. Every scene brims with detail and little bits of lore, which makes the simplistic exploration more satisfying than it has any right to be. Some games are too heavy-handed with world-building, preferring to vomit lore to the player in overly long dialogue sequences. Arco favors style over substance, and despite the simple graphics and pixel art, I felt emotionally tied to the world.

Many maps hold secrets and their dangers in the form of wild animals or pissed-off bandits looking to make a quick buck. Other areas, such as villages or towns, offer places to barter and a nice way to sell off any loot you pick up. The quests are usually very basic, with little more than fetch quests or clearing infested places, but I never got bored doing them, and they do not feel out of place. You will swap characters in different acts, and they come with unique skill sets but are easy to understand.

The combat is the meat of the game, and it makes me wish we had more of it! It is hard to think of a phrase to summarize Arco’s battle system because it is not seen much in this genre. ‘Superhot Turn Based’ might be the best way to describe it. Enemies will only act when you do, and they are a healthy mix of melee and ranged attacks to keep you on your toes. Some combat arenas have hazards to dodge or use, including fatal drops and spikes. It sounds very simple, and it is, but it is what makes the combat so satisfying. Successfully dodging a gauntlet of bullets and killing all the bandits while hanging on to my last shred of HP, I felt I had achieved something grand. You can only take two items into battle, so I habitually used a health-replenishing item and an offensive tool for my available slots.

With so many deaths plaguing our past, they haunt you in battle with unkillable ghosts that damage you on contact. Unlike other enemies, these little guys move during your turn, adding another little dynamic to the gameplay. You can take your time, but do not dawdle when these spirits come at you.

Arco is not an easy game. Enemy attacks hit hard; you must be strategic with your movement. You have an expansive skill tree to put points into new abilities or upgrade your stats, and you must take advantage of everything possible. Fortunately, Arco boasts a good amount of accessibility options. You can restart a battle at any time with no penalties, and if you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, you can withdraw and try again another time. There is also an Assist mode that allows you to skip some battles if you are struggling and gives you unlimited Dynamite.

A few fights are extremely punishing, and I spent dozens of attempts ramming into a brick wall. By the end, I was pretty sure my character would reach through the Steam Deck screen and sucker punch me in the face. I admit I turned on the Dynamite mode for several of these boss fights. While this greatly improves your damage output, you must still dodge attacks to avoid dying. It's a perfect balance, offering an easier difficulty but still requiring skill to survive the battles.

However, the game has a couple of shortcomings. On the technical side, Arco experienced a troubling launch with quite a few bugs. While Arco has received a lot of bug-fixing patches over the last few weeks, it will crash now and then. I had to force restart the Deck more than once as the game froze mid-combat, and your character can get stuck on terrain during battle or exploration. I also found a bizarre jittering bug with the controls while selecting my weapon during combat.

I encountered an unfortunate freeze upon Act 3, and no matter what I tried, I could not continue. While this was unfortunate, going by the forums seems pretty rare, and I probably just had awful luck. I will keep searching for a solution and update the review if this is fixed.

Despite my bad luck with the technical state, Arco is an easy game to fall in love with. With its fairly unique battle system and great world-building, this is a shining example of how to do strategy games well. It needs a few more performance patches and I would like more graphical options to tweak in the settings. Still, my disappointment with the unfortunate corruption has not sullied my impressions of Arco much.

Arco - Steam Deck Performance

Arco is classed as Verified by Valve for Steam Deck compatibility, and I find this to be accurate. With its pixel art visuals and full gamepad support, it's a lot of fun on the Steam Deck while performing well with battery life. There are no real settings to tweak in a game that impact performance, so what you see is what you get. If you are running on battery and don’t mind a little extra framerate drops, the 3W TDP setting gives more than an hour extra battery life, at the cost of some more dips.

Recommended Settings

If you have the Steam Deck docked or plugged into the mains, the default mode with 60hz refresh rate is the way to go for maximum performance. While I appreciate the extra battery life on my Steam Deck, keeping a stock mode with 40hz refresh rate provides the best balance between battery life and performance.

As usual, I began with stock settings (Unlocked TDP, 60hz, 60fps), and Arco was perfectly playable at these vanilla settings. I thought the standard Gamepad controller profile might be a detriment compared to playing it on a PC. Still, I could control my character very well in both the exploration and combat sections. The frame rate stays fairly solid at 60fps, although occasional frame dips occur during intense combat scenes. Thankfully, these are few and far between. The power draw is also decent, even at full power, with an average of 10 watts in most cases. Most of the time, this will be enough for you.

With no way to tweak graphical settings, our options are limited. We can do better on the battery life at the cost of some performance in extreme cases. Capping the refresh rate to 40HZ shaves a little off the power draw while maintaining that smooth framerate. If you want full 60fps, you will have a grand time in Arco while still enjoying over 4 hours of gameplay on the LCD Steam Deck. There is no performance impact by capping the refresh rate to 40hz while gaining a little more battery life: up to an extra hour in most cases, so I recommend this mode the most.

Battery Saving Settings

I experimented with TDP settings, and Arco is one of those games that can work at a 3-watt TDP limit! Those little frame dips are a little more frequent at minimum power, especially during combat sequences, but the power draw savings are significant. At this setting, I recorded an average power draw of just 7 watts, granting the LCD Steam Deck an average battery life of nearly 6 hours.

For the smoothest experience I recommend stock settings with 40hz refresh rate, but the turn-based nature of Arco’s combat makes that extra couple of hours in battery life more appealing, while sacrificing only a little performance.

Accessibility

Arco is only available in the English language right now, although more language support has been planned.

The Assist mode can toggle infinite dynamite, turn off the Ghosts, and skip combat. You can change the font style from Normal to Pixel version, adjust volume freely, and adjust the camera pan, screen shake, and hit stop amount. There are no ways to change controls or any graphical settings, and it lacks colorblind support.

Despite the disappointing accessibility options, I had no problems with the controls or reading the text.

Conclusion

Do not let my unfortunate save issue downplay Arco’s strengths. The Meso-American world is breathtaking to experience with its subtle approach to writing and world design, and the combat system is the perfect mix between punishing and engaging. While I hope Arco receives some more patches to squash the last of the bugs, Arco is an easy recommendation.

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

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