INDUSTRIA 2 Is Not A Great Experience On The Steam Deck

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There have been so many new games that have been coming out, but I’ve been really looking forward to INDUSTRIA 2. I love the premise, where a woman gets stuck in a parallel dimension where AI has consumed the landscape. It looks like a crazy mix between post-apocalyptic and sci-fi, which is right up my alley. It looks awesome, and I really wanted to see if it would run on the Steam Deck. The minimum specs are a little on the high side, but I was still curious.

Luckily, I had a chance to see for myself. Publisher Headup Games provided a key for us to review, though it was only earlier today. So, I have only had about 3 hours to try the game out. This isn’t enough time to review it, though I do like it so far. However, it did give me a chance to check out how it’s running on the Steam Deck, and this is one I would stay away from playing on the go.

Initially, when we launch the game, we have a choice between DirectX 11 and DirectX12, with 11 being the performance-friendly version and 12 having ray tracing. However, it doesn’t matter which we choose, because the game will not launch at all. It starts getting into the game, but RAM usage spikes so high that the game will just crash and send us back to the Steam client. Just based on this, it should get the Unsupported badge.

Still, I wanted to see if I could get it running, so I used CryoUtilities to add a 16GB Swap File. This is a specific file that acts as artificial, slower RAM. This gave enough room to get the game running, which was great, but the performance was about what I expected.

Even at the lowest settings, INDUSTRIA 2 could not stick to a solid 30 FPS. In the opening area, we could look around the house and it stick around 30, but as soon as we leave it, it will go down to 19 FPS. It gets a little better when inside different buildings, but it’s not enough and just doesn’t feel great. This also means we have to have upscaling on either performance or ultra performance, which looks very glittery.

In the end, even with the high system requirements, I was still hoping the game could be configured to work on the Steam Deck, but it’s unfortunately not there yet. It’s possible it could get better with optimization, but the fact that it needs a swap file to just launch, I can’t see this getting the playable or verified badge soon. Hopefully this will change, because it’s an awesome game so far!

INDUSTRIA 2 is available now and on sale for $22.49 until May 13th on Steam.

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