Stellar Blade's Demo Shows Promising Performance on the Steam Deck

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Whenever a developer talks about making sure their game is running on the Steam Deck, I get excited. It's nice seeing the team noticing us portable players, though for AAA games, I usually expect 30 FPS with some drops to the 25 range from time to time. It's still playable, but it teeters on the line of instability, which bothers me. Initially, I felt the same way about Stellar Blade, and tempered my hopes in this case. However, the demo is out, and developer Shift Up has proven me wrong, and I couldn't be happier.

The demo, which launched two days ago, gives us a look at how performance will be on the Steam Deck for the full game. It may not be the final build of the game, so it's possible it will be better or worse on launch, but it gives us a good idea of what to expect. From what I have seen so far, there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about playing Stellar Blade on the Steam Deck.

Shift Up has not been shy to tout Stellar Blade on the Steam Deck as we near the PC release. They have talked about making sure it runs well, even showing it running on the Deck in a post on Twitter/X. That confidence paid off, because I have faith it will be a wonderful experience on the go.

The game has its own Steam Deck preset, which works very well without sacrificing too much visual quality. There's still some blurriness up close in cutscenes due to FSR 3 on Performance mode, but I didn't notice much ghosting. Environments look like they have a good chunk of detail still, apart from some textures on the ground and on walls looking blurry and basic every now and then, but character models look good.

However, I was primarily focused on performance, which surprised me. The game never went below 40 FPS and was able to stick above 45 FPS in most scenarios. Running around without fighting usually kept above 50 FPS, though as soon as enemies were on screen and the fighting began, it would drop below. With just this preset, I can see 40 FPS stable throughout being achievable, with 45 FPS lock being possible with some minor drops. For a bigger game that looks this good, I was very impressed.

The opening was probably the best to stress test, since there's so much going on, and it held nicely. Even with explosions and debris flying around everywhere, the game held strong, and it's fantastic. There were more drops below 50 FPS, but it never went into the 30s, and that's just fantastic. Even some bosses were able to stick to 60 FPS with minor drops that stuck above 55, which is incredible.

I don't want ot test the graphical quality too much and make any judgments since this is a sliver of the full game, but it shows a lot of promise. I am blown away by how well Stellar Blade's demo plays, and it makes me confident that playing on the Steam Deck will not only be possible but also a great time. I am looking forward to playing through the full game to make sure performance sticks throughout and see just how well Shift Up has optimized the game.

Stellar Blade can be pre-purchased for $59.99 ahead of its June 11th release date.

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