RoadCraft's 2.0 Update Doesn't Help Much On Steam Deck

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RoadCraft, the recent spin-off of the MudRunner series, just got a major update in the past couple of days, dubbed Update 2.0. With it, it brought some new optimizations, fixes specifically for Steam Deck, as well as adding Intel XeSS as a new upscaling option.

I gave RoadCraft a 2/5 on its Steam Deck compatibility rating in my review back at launch. The game is playable, but you will be forced to run at 30 FPS with almost the lowest possible graphical settings to make it work.

While RoadCraft 2.0 has fixed a couple of bugs with the Steam Deck, it also promised some performance improvements and the addition of Intel XeSS as an alternative to AMD's FSR3 upscaling.

The bug fixes are nice, but we're really more concerned about optimization here, and sadly, the optimizations appear to be somewhat minimal.

Using a test save I have in a forest, pretty much the most intensive situation in the game, I unfortunately didn't notice any improvements in general performance. Likely, these optimizations that have been made have been related to specific parts of the game, so you might see certain elements take less power, but in general, don't expect improvements across the board.

Does the addition of Intel XeSS give us something new to work with? It might come down to personal preference. Performance on Intel XeSS against FSR3 when both are using the "Performance" preset is lacking. FSR3 generally ran about 3 FPS higher than XeSS, meaning you have to run XeSS at "Ultra Performance" to match FSR3's performance.

Whether that is a degradation in image quality is up to you. XeSS definitely seems to present a "sharper" image, albeit at a lower base resolution. FSR3 might look better in motion, but in a still image like the one below, the image is significantly softer.

Even with increased Sharpness for FSR3, it still produces a fairly soft image. This is especially noticeable if you compare the grass on the left side of the image to XeSS.

The update also appears to have a "bug" where a performance overlay is constantly displayed on the screen while on Steam Deck, which some players might find quite annoying. Hopefully, this is quickly patched out.

RoadCraft is available on Steam now for $39.99. While you have to make compromises to play on the Steam Deck, the game is fully playable.

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