Hellraiser: Revival's Demo Shows Potential For Steam Deck Performance

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Over the past few events I’ve been to, I’ve played so many different games. It has been a joy to experience upcoming titles and see what we can expect in the next few months. However, of all the games I’ve played, Hellraiser: Revival stood out. It wasn’t just because it was well-made and interesting, but it’s based on Hellraiser, which is known for its very sexual nature and its emphasis on Masochism and Sadism. Honestly, it’s so graphic that I am surprised it was even made into a movie, and now it’s being adapted into a video game.

I played it at multiple different events, and I’ve written articles about what I really like about it and how graphic it is. However, a demo for the game has just launched, so I decided to test it out and see what we can expect in terms of performance on the Steam Deck. Honestly, I was quite surprised by the experience.

In a majority of the areas in the demo, the game was running at over 45 FPS. For a game that looks as good and is made with Unreal Engine 5, I definitely did not expect it to perform as well as it did. This is at the default settings, which we’re all set to low, but we had TSR upscaling at 67% resolution, which is around the Quality setting for upscalers. This kept the game looking great, feeling great, and was way more enjoyable than I expected.

It isn’t like this all the way through, and there are still some spots that will dip below. I didn’t find any areas that went below 30 FPS, but there were definitely some rooms with lots of bodies or a lot going on that did drop into the 30 range. So, based on the experience so far, I would say it could stick to a solid 30 FPS. There are still a lot of later areas in the game that could drop more, but I’m quite impressed with how optimized the demo is.

One thing I do want to mention is that there is a good chunk of stuttering that I felt as I kept playing. Going into other rooms had slight stuttering; running around the labyrinth sometimes led to stuttering, and while most of the stuttering would stay above 30 FPS, there were one or two times that did drop below. It didn’t happen super often, and could be from the shader cache. I could see this being fixed for the full release, so I’m not too worried about it.

Overall, the demo has been very optimistic about playing Hellraiser: Revival on the Steam Deck. Not only is it running extremely well, but there is still some room to drop the settings further to mitigate those performance issues. I’m quite pleased with the experience, and I can’t wait to play the full game and see if it’s just as good on the Deck all the way through.

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival can be pre-purchased for $39.99 on Steam.

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