UNBEATABLE Is Now Out And Steam Deck Performance Improvements Are Coming

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When it comes to publishers, Playstack is one of the best. They have a constant stream of great titles they have published, like Balatro, Abiotic Factor, and Void/Breaker, and they haven't let us down with releases yet. UNBEATABLE is one of them. UNBEATABLE is a rhythm adventure game where music is illegal, and you'll be following Beat and her band as they are on the run from the law. The rhythm aspect did take a little bit of time to get used to, since we not only need to utilize the left and right shoulder buttons at the right time while the camera changes its position, but I love the soundtrack and gameplay so far.

It's a lot of fun, and I can see myself getting lost in the story and musical gameplay quite easily. However, it did release with some performance issues on the Steam Deck, making parts of the game harder to play. But it seems like we won't have to wait too long, because Steam Deck performance improvements are on the way.

In a post announcing the release of UNBEATABLE, developer D-CELL GAMES mentioned that performance improvements for the Steam Deck are ongoing and will be coming. Specifically, they are fine-tuning performance in the Story Mode, and mention that Arcade Mode should work perfectly, more or less. Still, this is a great confirmation, which makes me happy. They also confirm that more stages are coming, as well as Localization starting with Chinese, an Xbox port is on the way, free updates are coming, and more.

This didn't look like a very intensive game graphically, so I wanted to see for myself if there were performance issues, and oh boy, yes, there are. Arcade Mode does work perfectly, sitting at 60 FPS with around 12W battery drain. The actual rhythm-battling gameplay that matters should work perfectly fine, and I am very grateful for that. This is really the most important part of the game, so keeping it in working order should be a priority.

However, Story Mode needs a lot of work. Just running around outside of buildings crushes the framerate, throttling it down to 40 FPS or lower at times. The frame timing is off as well, and just makes running around feel like a jittery mess. Going inside homes and buildings seems to eliminate it for the most part, with some smaller spikes here and there, but walking around outside of that just feels horrible.

We can lock the framerate to 30 FPS to mitigate this, but the game feels awful at 30 FPS and still has frame timing issues. So, if you have UNBEATABLE and plan to play on the Steam Deck, you may want to avoid the Story Mode for the time being.

The most important parts of the game are working fine, and that's what matters in the end, but it will be very hard to play through and enjoy the Story Mode on the Steam Deck in its current state. I am overjoyed that D-CELL knows of this issue and is working on it, because as it stands, I find it hard to play through without getting a headache, as it looks like the characters are jumping around like we have some minor network latency in an online game.

I am looking forward to seeing improvements make their way over, and as soon as they do, I will be the first one diving back into the game to continue the story and enjoy the rest of what this experience has to offer!

UNBEATABLE is on sale for $25.19 until December 23rd.

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