Last month I finished up Transiruby, which is a really fun and breezy Metroidvania. The art style and the incredible chiptune soundtrack gave me big Axiom Verge vibes, despite being quite tonally different.
My June project is getting TotK emulation working satisfactorily, which finally happened last night after far too much trial and error. I know Nintendo’s lawyers have made everyone scared but the amount of vagueposting around this subject is maddening. This means I can likely sell my Switch as it was the only game I had left to play. It also means I have to play the first 10 hours of the game again…
Do you mind sharing your TotK setup? I never finished it because my kids always want the switch, and I find the ergonomics really uncomfortable to play for long
Sure, with the caveat that everyone’s definition of “playable” is different.
I am using the latest Eden AppImage and a 1.4.2 ROM. I didn’t change anything in Eden besides controller setup and increasing the RAM to 8GB (this has to be done in the game config). This gets you fps in the teens and 20s.
Then I ran the NX Optimizer AppImage. I used the Steam Deck preset and chose the 2nd of the 2 TotK entries on the game menu. The only change I made was the lower shadows to 512x. I don’t know if that did anything… the shadows do look pretty bad. Then I clicked “Apply”. Note that if you have multiple emulators, NX is going to try to figure out which one to apply to. I’d get rid of anything that’s not Eden AND the settings folders that are in
~/.local/share.NX adds a “mod” entry you can view and turn on and off in the game settings. It also installs something called UltraCam, and you’ll know that because it changes the game opening and adds UI elements. Now I have no clue what any of this stuff is doing. It’s poorly explained… Like is it just modifying emulator settings you could do yourself? Is it doing something to the ROM? No clue. You can make adjustments to UltraCam settings by hitting both triggers combined with left stick click. I changed resolution to 900p, and turned on FSR. But it’s unclear how much that helped.
Anyway, the result is a max, locked 30 fps. It will dip while shaders are caching and when you first use ultrahand and in villages and other areas with fire. It is not smooth by any means but it’s “mostly smooth”. Usually in the open world and in shrines it’s stable. There’s also some banding from what I assume is anti-aliasing, but I don’t see any turned on in any setting I can locate, so who knows.
Like I said, it’s good enough for me. Like you the ergonomics of the Steam Deck are so much better than Switch that I’ll take the compromise here.
Thanks! I’ll give it a shot one of these days.
Operation Harsh Doorstop multiplayer playtest.
I played in the match in this video!
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=oTEBj3PiB10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEBj3PiB10
OHD is a blast! It is like Battlefield but moddable and not owned by EA or Tencent or some other worthless massive company. Oh yeah it is free, and not in a sketchy way, it is a genuinely community focused game. No microtransactions or any of that crap.
I have horrible news.
Ring works perfectly on Linux. Apparently this game is an absolute wanker on Windows. Here it just glugs along gluggingly.
I’ve actually run into several older games that have major issues on Windows but run great on Deck. Many of these require fan patches to fix their windows issues (stuff like increasing how much ram the game can use, etc).
A recent example was I gave a friend a copy of FEAR, just to discover it ran way worse on his high end PC than it does on my Steam Deck.
Can’t stop playing Slay The Spire 2, so gooood
Everything is Crab. A roguelite evolution game where the challenge is to out survive the other creatures. Don’t let the cute graphics fool you. It’s a lot of fun and the challenge ramps up quite a bit as you proceed through the difficulty levels.
Metro Last Light Redux. Better than the first one and looks good.
It makes me want to read the books.
I just bought Mina, but I just keep on going back to my old comfort game, Binding of Isaac.
How is Mina? I’ve heard some mixed takes on it, but it being from the Shovel Knight devs makes me want to jump on it.
It’s alright, certainly high quality, the difficulty curve is kind of wack. Keeping money in the early game is brutal, but it doesn’t take long until the game pulls a 180 and you don’t lose money ever, on top of facetanking half your problems with sheer stats and item effects. Reminds me of phase locket back in SK and how it makes half the bosses trivial.
I wasn’t impressed by vanilla Shovel Knight and only loved how original and smooth all the DLC were, this feels like going back to SK somehow - even if on paper there’s tons of original ideas here. If you like Shovel of Hope or 2D Zelda (which it sticks to a lot, including the problems) you’ll like this, and if you like both you’ll love this, probably.
My answer is a bit cheating, because its emulation of Playstation 1 via RetroArch. The game is Dark Deception 3: Dark Delusion. It looks good, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. The manual is not needed, because the game teaches with tutorials. If you want, have a look at screenshots to get an idea how the game looks. Overall game seem to be okayish in gameplay, but makes up with an unusual game concept and good soundtrack.
The game is an Tactical Action Adventure game, with levels to pass. So its more a linear game with stages. Controls are not great, more like tank controls from third person. The idea is to run around, setup traps and attacks and with one of the buttons “use” them at the right time. The character is basically a witch. Bring up the “map” to set traps for the associated button. I’m quite early on, so not sure if I will ever finish this. If you choose to play this game, be aware that there is no autosave and you have to save manually after each stage.
The last few times I was on I was preoccupied with Slay The Spire 2 and Audiosurf 2 for Steam games specifically.
Otherwise, I have slowed down on it since I’m in post game, but I was busy with a fun pokemon fan game ( Pokémon Copper ) in the Azuri region.
Yeah, I haven’t played on it much outside maybe those 3 games.
Mina the Hollower
Only 3 hours in so far, the combat is a bit challenging already, and I’m still exploring around the starting city.
Finding secret areas is as fun as it was in Shovel Knight, music is great, art is gorgeous, the only complaint so far is how you get stuck with the starting weapon and switching it later requires a lot of money
I just installed Chip’s Challenge after realizing it was free. It’s alright in game mode (there’s an existing community control scheme that works well) but better on desktop since you can access the dropdown menus that way. Switched to the Win theme and got a solid dose of nostalgia.
As with another reply, I’m also “cheating.” I started up a save file for GTA: London 1969, emulating the PSX version. Apparently, apart from second-hand and sailing the seas, the original GTA (and its expansions) and GTA2 are unobtanium for PC these days. Kind of sad to see.
- Nuclear Option + Saitek X52 HOTAS + LookPilot
- Factorio
I’ve been playing a lot of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. As someone who enjoyed the Zero Escape games but had never played a Danganronpa, I was unsure about this one, but the demo really gripped me. It plays great on the Deck. The back buttons have been nice for skipping through the VN portions since my A button has gotten loud and clicky.
That game is really long and I’m trying to pace myself though, so I’ve now also picked up Mina the Hollower. I didn’t like the demo, and am not a fan of the retro aesthetic, but I downloaded it to try it out based on the glowing reviews. I don’t know what all they changed from the demo, but I was hooked almost right away. It’s hard starting out, but satisfying and snappy to play, and the GBC-style graphics are better (more readable) on the smaller screen of the Deck than on a TV.
Dust, the Twilight princess port, but I just got to the temple of time and am hard crashing every time I put the master sword in. So I’m going to find something else now. Maybe elden ring again?
They’ve published a bunch of updates, with pretty detailed change logs. Have you checked to see if they addressed that issue?
I haven’t got nearly that far. It’s an absolutely amazing recomp and I love that it exists, but as I’m fiddling with the controls and the camera and the combat I’m just thinking “Breath of the Wild exists, why am I doing this?”
I haven’t, but I’m also fairly lazy and without a robust log, I figured it was a one off bug. But thank you for reminding me that the smartest among us need reminders of oversight.
