Cult of the Lamb, the upcoming roguelike, cult-building DIY simulator, releases for the consoles and PC on August 11, 2022. At the time of the review period, the game hasn’t been classified as a verified game for the Steam Deck. There’s little doubt that Valve is busy going through hundreds of games for the mighty handheld gaming PC, and with Cult of the Lamb being a new title, it will just have to wait.
That is ok, as we’ve put the game through the paces and came aware pleased with the performance of the game.
TLDR; The game plays exceptionally well on the Steam Deck.
How does Cult of the Lamb Perform on the Steam Deck?
During our hands-on with the game, we tested the game’s default resolution on the Steam Deck and 1080p. Both resolutions were also running at high and medium settings, with all the options enabled, except for Bloom and Chromic Abberation. Yuck. The Frames Per Second was set to 60 FPS, Half Rate Shading, and Manual GPU Clock Control were disabled. The scaling Filter was set to Linear, and changing this setting made no difference.
The default resolution of 1280×800
We noticed that the Steam Deck handled Cult of the Lamb reasonably well at the default resolution. As the game is split into two parts, base-building, and adventuring, this is where we focused.
Base-building: We noticed that when we were in our base, the frames per second hovered between 40-50 FPS. Sometimes it would drop to high 30 FPS. That was when we were in an area where dozens of our cult members had converged. Very playable on the Steam Deck.
Adventuring: Things were quite different when we were smashing bad guys over the head, as the frames per second hovered between high 50s to 60 frames per second. There was the occasional slowdown, which was also noticed on high-powered PCs.
Overall, the game was very playable on the Steam Deck.
Changing the resolution to 1920×1080
Changing the resolution to 1920×1080 on the Steam Deck was a repeat of what was observed at 1280×800.
Base-building: When we were in our base, the frames per second hovered between 40-50 FPS. Sometimes it would drop to high 30 FPS. That was when we were in an area where dozens of our cult members had converged.
Adventuring: Things were quite different when we were smashing bad guys over the head, as the frames per second hovered between high 50s to 60 frames per second. There was the occasional slowdown, which was also noticed on high-powered PCs.
Again, the game was very playable on the Steam Deck.
Medium Settings vs. High Settings
Seeing how we tested at High Settings, we went ahead and changed it to Medium settings and noticed that the only difference is gaining a few FPS. Visually, there isn’t a big difference that many won’t notice. That said, I do recommend using Medium over High.
Changing the options such as Shadows or Vignette doesn’t net you a big gain either, and you’re limited regardless of what you do on the Steam Deck. But do make sure you disable Bloom and Chromic Abberation. That is unless you like those settings.
Leaving everything at 40 Frames Per Second.
If you don’t mind playing at a lower Frames Per Second setting and leaving it set to 40 for either 800p or 1080p, then you’ll find that the game is pretty much constant. Either in your base or elsewhere in the world, the game will hold steady at 40, for the most part.
The Steam Deck again shows that despite its specs, it can provide a fantastic gaming experience. This is why I’m excited about the Steam Deck and the future of PC gaming, at least in the handheld format.
Here’s Some Steam Deck Footage
I figured why not end this piece with some footage of Cult of the Lamb being played on the Steam Deck. Settings are as I mentioned above. This way, you can get a clear representation of the game in action.
Cult of the Lamb will be released on August 11, 2022, for PC and consoles.
