Pirate Adventure 'Windrose' is Not Quite Smooth Sailing on the Steam Deck

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Windrose is a brand new pirate PvE crafting exploration game that seemingly came out of nowhere (at least for me it did!), and it's gotten off to a really good start with its Early Access release on Steam, garnering thousands of reviews in just 24 hours. It's currently sitting at a 90% positive rating, at least in English reviews.

Given the game's very high minimum requirements for a GTX 1080 Ti, we thought we would give it a try on the Steam Deck and see whether it really is that demanding or if our plucky handheld can take it on. Bear in mind that this article is just meant to look at how the game plays and performs on the Steam Deck, not an analysis of how good (or bad) the game itself is.

Windrose (Early Access) - Steam Deck Performance Tested

The first thing you'll notice when you boot Windrose on the Steam Deck is that controller support, while present, isn't implemented well right now, a fact the developers are aware of. Rather than navigating the menus with the D-pad, you'll have to use your analog stick to control an in-game cursor. It's not ideal, but it is at least fully functional.

Windrose does, however, support 16:10 resolutions, so no black borders on the Steam Deck, and the UI is reasonably sized, so I didn't have trouble reading any of the text.

When it comes to Windrose's actual performance, it's not great, but it's still better than I expected. You won't be aiming for anything more than 30 FPS here. I would recommend you run with all quality settings set to their lowest, turn the Upscaler to TSR, and set the Render Resolution to 40%. This provides an acceptable image while still maintaining some level of acceptable performance.

Even with these lower settings, however, expect dips from 30 FPS. In areas with heavy visual effects, such as smoke in your base when furnaces are cooking, expect to drop into the high 20s. Ship-to-Ship combat is probably the worst affected, dropping into the low 20s at times and occasionally stuttering, likely due to RAM/VRAM consumption.

I also wasn't able to test large player bases, as the building system is complex and you can build truly huge bases with it, so expect some performance loss if you are constructing a mega base, too.

Also, the developers warn that hosting a multiplayer game uses more RAM than playing solo or joining one. The RAM usage was quite significant, so I would recommend against hosting a multiplayer game on the Steam Deck itself.

Final Thoughts

Windrose is a fantastic game; I really enjoyed my few hours playing it for this test, but it made it clear that playing on the Steam Deck isn't the way to go. You can likely handle some base management or less intensive tasks, but if you are going into combat, especially ship combat, there's a decent chance a stutter will get you killed, as the combat is tough.

Windrose is in Early Access, however, and the developers have stated that the system requirements aren't final, as there will be optimizations and changes in the future. So who knows, the Steam Deck may become a viable option down the line!

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