Heartbound Gets Lots of Steam Deck Optimization in Latest Patch

There is something special and magical about older RPGs like Earthbound and Chrono Trigger. The pixel art and emphasis on a great, engaging, and sometimes hilarious story felt down-to-earth and so enjoyable. Just like Undertale, Heartbound is another awesome game influenced by these greats, and earlier today, a new patch was released that heavily optimizes the game on the Steam Deck.

In the newest patch for Heartbound, version 1.0.9.63, there was a solid amount of Steam Deck optimization. There are now no crashes, much better performance, improved asset caching in all environments, better lighting performance, and no more crashes from spamming controller inputs on Linux or Steam Deck OLED devices. This means we should be getting a smooth 60 FPS without crashes on the most updated firmware of the Deck.

On top of this, we do have some new content and options, too. We now have the ability to disable/enable wiggling text, new facial expressions have been added for Sheldon and Shelly, some cutscenes have better effects, and some KB+M inputs have been changed up a bit. There are some other changes and bug fixes, and you can check them all out on their Steam Community post.

Heartbound is currently on sale for $7.99 during the Steam Winter Sale. This is a nice 20% off, so if you are interested in the game, this is a great time to invest. It has also already been rated Verified for the Steam Deck, so with this patch, there should be little to no issues whatsoever!

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