The King is Watching Gets Full Steam Deck Support With UI Overhaul and Gamepad Support

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One of my favorite games that I played last year was The King is Watching. It’s a simple game, but one I fell in love with as soon as I played the demo. You put down tiles on a grid that will all work to give you resources, but those tiles will only work when you are watching over them. You can only watch over a few tiles at a time, so you have to be consistently looking and switching around resources to get enough to make more powerful units to protect your castle. It’s engaging and exciting, and today during the tinyBuild Connect showcase, they announced that they have updated the game with full Steam Deck compatibility.

With this update, the game is now fully playable comfortably on the Steam Deck. Before, we would’ve had to use the Keyboard and Mouse controller scheme and utilize the original UI. However, both of these issues have been fixed, and it should be entirely playable on the Deck without needing to make any adjustments.

The biggest change from this update is the new UI that has been rebuilt with the Steam Deck experience in mind. It might not seem obvious at first, but there have been some adjustments to text size and bolding, like your castle health numbers being larger, and there are now indicators of what buttons control which parts of the UI. We also have borders at the top and bottom of the screen, making it appear as though the game supports the 16:10 aspect ratio of the Deck. It’s a small change, but it does make the game look better on the Deck.

We also have full gamepad support, and this is probably my favorite improvement. Before, we had to rely on the keyboard and mouse controller scheme, but now, we can play the game with the controller. It took a little getting used to, but I thought it was pretty genius to have the DPad control where the king is looking and use the left stick to interact with the elements on the bottom and look at details of the tiles. We can change what the left stick controls with the left and right triggers, and we have indicators of which buttons we can use to pause the game and look at our upcoming enemies.

Both of these were hand-in-hand in completing the portable experience, and it becomes a must-have game for portable play when taking into account its performance. They can still easily hit 60 FPS with relatively low battery drain under 10W for over 4-5 hours of battery life. It’s truly a fantastic game, and now I see no reason why it should be passed over now that it’s had so many improvements that make it great to play on the go.

In their announcement, developer Hypnohead also mentions that while they did improve the Deck experience, there are still some spots where the text is uncomfortable to read at lower resolutions. However, they are reviewing the cases individually and are working to improve them over the next few weeks to aim for that Verified badge.

The King Is Watching is fully playable on Steam Deck, although you may have noticed that it does not yet carry the Steam Deck Verified badge.

We’re happy with how the new interface has come together, and we’ve recently tested it with members of our community. However, there are still a few isolated places where text may be uncomfortable to read at lower resolutions. We’re reviewing these cases individually with Valve and working to improve them over the coming weeks.

We’ve already received some useful feedback from early testers, and we’d now love to hear from those of you trying the new UI on both PC and Steam Deck. If you encounter any text or interface elements that feel difficult to use, please let us know!

Hypnohead - The King is Watching Steam Deck Support Announcement

The King is Watching is on sale for $9.74 until September 27th. It’s still currently rated Playable, what is the team mentioned, it will hopefully be Verified soon.

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