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I was extremely excited when I heard MachineGames was making an Indiana Jones game. I love their Wolfenstein series, which takes place in an alternate universe killing Nazis, so this felt like a good fit. And the game is great, with a solid story and enjoyable gameplay. However, it isn't great on the Steam Deck. On release, it was rated Unsupported, and some Proton patches were needed just to eliminate any graphical artifacts. It didn't fix performance, though, which was very underwhelming. But, out of the blue, a new update may seem positive for those wanting to play on the Steam Deck.
Earlier today, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle got updated to be Steam Deck Verified, and it looks like it was thanks to one setting MachineGames changed. In a Steam Community Post they made, they changed the value of the Texture Pool Size to a value that stops the game from exceeding the Deck's RAM limits, ultimately crashing the device.
While this is a great change, I still had my worries about the performance, so I decided to test it out, and I am glad I did. It's true that I did not crash during my testing, which I appreciate, but there are two big issues I still encountered. Performance is still very susceptible to dropping on the default settings for the Deck. Some areas still went down to 24 - 28 FPS, and it was draining the full battery the entire time. It did stick to 30 and above more than I expected, but it wasn't fully stable.
The bigger issue is loading. Booting the game took an actual 4 - 5 minutes of sitting at a black screen before the main menu loaded, and I consistently found 20-30 second pockets that nearly froze the game to load in the next area. This happened enough to stand out in my eyes, and I was not a fan. I thought the game froze when I booted it the second time since none of my MangoHUD overlay was changing, but it did end up loading.
If you don't mind the performance drops and the loading times, I would say Indiana Jones and the Great Circle does seem to be more playable. You still won't get a solid 30 FPS, and it does look a bit blurry and ugly at times, but I can play through it with enough patience. I don't think it should have the Verified badge, I wouldn't consider it a "great experience", but it seems to finally be compatible with the Steam Deck to some degree.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle can be purchased on Steam for $69.99, but to save some money, you can also get it on Fanatical for $59.49 with coupon code FANATICAL15.
The Fanatical links above are using an affiliate link, which gives us a little back from sales at no extra charge to you. All proceeds go back into SDHQ and its development.
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Adaptive XeSS is the MVP here. Game runs mostly 30 FPS with one area very problematic (the sand slide in the Giza map). All settings on low and reflections on. Game is amazing. Using Proton GE.