MECCHA CHAMELEON Is Better On The Steam Deck Than I Expected

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Recently, I have seen a good chunk of random games get extremely popular overnight, and over the past few days, I have seen this with MECCHA CHAMELEON. In less than a week, the game sold over 2 million copies, which is incredible to see. And on top of that, the concept is so simple, yet so ingenious. Seeing how popular it was, I just had to check it out and see if it was even playable on the Steam Deck, and the experience was surprisingly better than I expected.

MECCHA CHAMELEON’s concept is something that sounds crazy, like it hasn’t been done before. It takes a hide-and-seek formula, something we have seen most used in Prop Hunt, and brings it back down to reality with a twist. Instead of turning into props and trying to blend into the environment, you will run around as a white figure, strike poses, attach yourself to the walls or objects, and paint yourself to fit in. No longer are you turning into a prop or hiding in corners; now you are attaching yourself to objects and doing your best to paint yourself to fit in.

It’s way more fun than I expected, and I can see why it’s so popular. Relying on your painting skills and quick thinking to trick the hunters and blend in is incredible. I knew it was going to be fun; I like these kinds of games, but I didn’t expect it to feel so enjoyable to just strike a weird pose and paint. My first attempt at this failed miserably, where I lay down flat on top of a hay barrel and tried to paint myself to look like hay, but I started to get the hang of it as I found what started working for me. This also opens up the possibilities, since you can technically attach yourself to the wall and paint yourself to blend into that color.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself that this isn’t going to be that great to play on the Steam Deck, and to some degree, you are right. However, it also is better than I expected in different ways.

A lot of the negative thoughts of playing this on the go come from the lack of controller support and needing to paint yourself. Painting yourself is going to be significantly easier with a keyboard and mouse, and if you’re going to be switching colors and getting more detailed with the paint, it’s going to be tougher on the Deck. The lack of controller support hurts here, because we do have to rely on the trackpads to go back-and-forth painting and changing colors.

But what made it a little bit more manageable is the fact that we have 60 seconds to find a spot and paint ourselves before the hunters start coming. It doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but it is enough time to find a spot, get your post in, and paint yourself. You may not be able to do the intricate painting, but for some basic stuff, it does work. It also helps to have a good controller layout to streamline the process, and I use the “Kinda makes it easier” layout from Caseman120 to facilitate this. It definitely helped a lot, enabling poses and paint faster with fewer steps needed to make it happen.

As for performance, this is where it gets a little rough. After turning down some settings, I was able to stick above 30 FPS, but I couldn’t go higher than 40 without drops. I was almost on the lowest settings, and while the main menu was able to hit 60 FPS, the performance in gameplay was significantly worse. I’m not sure what’s causing performance to drop so much, but there seems to be some bottleneck since battery drain isn’t pushed to the max. Still, the fluctuations are rougher than I would expect, so it’s a shame performance is so all over the place.

However, at the end of the day, locking MECCHA CHAMELEON to 30 FPS works perfectly fine for this game. And while it isn’t ideal, I would consider it playable here and there. It’s not going to give us a full experience, and unless they add controller support, painting is never going to feel as good as using a mouse. For what it’s worth, if you have no other way to play the game, there may still be some form of enjoyment you can find playing this on the Deck.

MECCHA CHAMELEON can be purchased on Steam for $5.99. It’s rated Steam Deck Playable due to needing a community controller, configuration, showing incorrect controller icons, needing to manually bring up the virtual keyboard, small in-game text, and needing to manually configure the graphical settings for optimal performance.

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