Zoochosis Is Playable on Steam Deck, But It Will Get Better

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Zoochosis was provided by Clapperheads for review. Thank you!

Ever since I saw the trailer, Zoochosis has been an experience I couldn't wait to enjoy. The game looked extremely creepy, and while I do get scared easily, I really wanted to experience it for myself. Now, I have that chance, and I have been enjoying the experience so far. Our full review will be coming within the next week or two, but in this article, I just wanted to talk about Steam Deck's performance so far, and whether it would be good for a portable experience, and right now, there are definitely some pros and cons.

The biggest knock against the game right now is controller support. There isn't any, and while the game can be played with keyboard and mouse setup, there are a couple of changes that really need to be made. Camera sensitivity has to be reduced and you have to map a key to the "Q" button so you can swap between the two tools you can hold. Otherwise, the game controls are okay, but unless you change those, it can be really uncomfortable to play.

As for Zoochosis' performance, your device will be pushed heavily on higher graphical settings. Inside your base, the performance can stick to 28 - 30 FPS, but as soon as you go into habitats, performance will drop heavily. The Wallaby habitat was the worst so far, going as far down as 19 FPS! This drop was while the render resolution was at 63% as well.

This can be fixed pretty nicely by setting the quality to Low, which brings the framerate from 19 to around 40, but you do sacrifice some visual quality that really help establish the creepy atmosphere. The game still looks pretty good at lower quality, but the Shadows that are eliminated do really make a difference overall.

Luckily, I can confirm that the team does want to support the Steam Deck and is working on making it better, but they weren't able to do it before the game launched. So, the game will more than likely get better as time goes on, but it will take some time. RAM usage is a bit on the higher side as well, but it hasn't gotten too bad or close to crashing.

Zoochosis definitely has the potential to be an awesome portable experience, but it does need a little work first. Full controller support would be essential, while some optimizations to at least play the game on medium quality with a slightly higher render resolution would be awesome. I hope it will improve, but it will definitely need some work.

Zoochosis is on sale at 10% off for $22.49 until October 15th.

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