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When it comes to arena shooters, your choices on the Steam Deck can be somewhat limited, with the likes of Valorant not working due to the anti-cheat in use. FragPunk, however, has no such issues and is definitely a viable option for Steam Deck users looking for an arena FPS with a difference.

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What is FragPunk?

FragPunk is a free-to-play 5v5 Arena Shooter, it shares similarities with other games in its genre, for example, the main game mode involves an attacking team and a defending team, where the attacking team must plant their "converter" at a point on the map, and the prevent the converter from being defused for a set amount of time, whereas the defenders must defeat the attackers and defuse the converter. Quite similar to how the bombs work in Counter Strike.

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Characters can have unique abilities, such as semi-invisibility to sneak up on enemies.

The main "gimmick" of FragPunk, however, is the Shard Cards. These cards are played by each team at the beginning of a round and will change how the game plays for that round. One team may play a card that gives them explosive rounds, for example, or perhaps higher movement speed. There are even cards that will turn the arena to ice which adds sliding physics to the game.

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Shards Cards offer ways to change up the gameplay between rounds.

This is quite a novel idea that keeps things interesting as you play across the maps, although sometimes the teams don't get a great draw on the cards and it'll pretty much play like any other arena shooter.

Outside of ranked play, there is also a Team Deathmatch mode and just straight-up casual shooting, where there is no objective but to have fun and presumably practice against other real players.

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There are a variety of game modes, such as ranked Shard Clash, and more casual modes like Team Deathmatch

Is FragPunk Any Good?

I don't have a huge amount of experience with arena shooters, having never played Valorant, and only played Counter Strike and XDefiant for the purposes of testing, but the gunplay in FragPunk feels on point. The movement is fluid and responsive, everything feels smooth, and while the guns don't feel too impactful, they don't feel weak either.

The Shard Cards are pretty fun, and add an element of variety to the game, which is a good thing seeing as these arena shooters don't have a great amount of variety when it comes to game modes or maps, and the maps are often on the smaller side, which is the case here, with only 6 maps being available.

Sometimes their effects will be muted, but other times they can dramatically change how the teams will play the game, although it can feel a bit one-sided if one team gets a better draw than the other and clearly has an advantage. Adding an element of luck to what is often a skill-based genre is quite a decision.

The 12 characters in FragPunk also have abilities beyond the weapons and shard cards that you can deploy, such as smoke grenades, teleporting, and sentry turrets. These are unique to each character, and (unless you play a Shard Card) you can only have 1 of these characters in use per team.

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While FragPunk's ranked modes are already quite brutal in terms of how skilled players are, which is to be expected given the game's similarity to other titles such as Valorant and Counter Strike, the game's unranked modes, such as Team Deathmatch are a bit more relaxed, and are much easier to play on a controller/gamepad, playing with a gamepad in ranked is a tough ask, and you'll likely die before you even get the chance to react to an enemy.

I found myself enjoying the Team Deathmatch mode much more than ranked, with smaller maps and infinite respawns, it's a race to 100 kills, and it was a lot more enjoyable for me and less "sweaty" than the other mode which is die once and you're out. Strategic movement was out of the window, and it was mostly down to positioning and surprising your opponent which wins you the deathmatch.

The game also prevents visibility into spawn rooms in deathmatches, as well as giving players 1 second of invisibility once they leave a spawn room, to combat spawn camping, and although we did camp the enemy a couple of times, they were easily able to break free if they waited inside the spawn room and came out in a group.

How Does FragPunk Run on the Steam Deck?

For the most part FragPunk runs very well. Running on the lowest settings, at 1280x800 with an 80% resolution scale and using TAA, I was able to get a constant 60 for most of the gameplay. I also switched the Graphics API to DirectX11.

Throwing down a smoke grenade and looking through scopes were the 2 main ways to drop my FPS. A smoke grenade can drop the FPS to around 50 if you're looking at it at a specific angle. Looking through a scope at the smoke grenade can drop the FPS down to 20 in extreme circumstances. If you're not in these very specific situations though, the game largely maintains 60 FPS.

Power draw and temperatures were on the higher end, as you might expect, with the battery drain being around 20W-24W for the most part, and temperatures usually around the 75C-85C range, so you do get some fan noise, especially when combat is ongoing. Don't expect more than 1.5 hours of playtime from a Steam Deck LCD and a couple of hours from a Steam Deck OLED here.

I would say the main issue with playing FragPunk on the Steam Deck is the controls. FragPunk doesn't have input-based matchmaking, so most players you go up against will be using a mouse and keyboard, and that means you just aren't very competitive. I'm by no means a skilled FPS player, but there was no chance of me being able to react fast enough and aim precisely enough with a controller to beat some of the opponents I was up against. Although there is aim assist for controller players, it just isn't enough to react in the split-second you have to before you get shot, at most you can take 2-3 shots before you die in FragPunk.

Final Thoughts:

I found FragPunk to be quite a lot of fun, if you are skilled at this kind of game, you'll probably fit right in, as although the Shard Cards do add another element of play, at the end of the day, it's not too different from the likes of Counter Strike and Valorant. The downside of this is that there are plenty of players who know their way around FragPunk very well, so it can be a bit brutal for newcomers.

If you do play on the Steam Deck, I would recommend you dock and play with a Mouse and Keyboard, because unless you are a crack shot with a controller, you'll probably get frustrated by all the other players having an advantage over you in this way. Alternatively, stay out of ranked for a while and just enjoy the Team Deathmatch and other more "casual" modes, they can be great fun and still earn you progress on your Battle Pass and unlock new Shard Cards. (Yes, there is a battle pass, and it does have a "premium" version which you will presumably have to pay for).

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The FragPunk closed beta is running until October 21st, I'm not sure if they're still adding more people to the beta, but you can go ahead and register your interest and they might just add you!

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Oliver Stogden
Oliver began playing video games at an early age, starting with the SNES console and Commodore Amiga computer. Nowadays, his interest is in the future of portable technology, such as handheld gaming systems, portable power stations/banks, and portable monitors. And seeing just how far we can push these devices.
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