Welcome to this week’s early edition (I think I’m moving it to earlier in the week going forward) of the Steam Deck Weekly. Ahead of Gamescom 2024, some notable announcements, trailers, releases, and new Steam Deck Verified games are the focus of today’s article. On the review front, the highlights are the Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid, Tomba! Special Edition, and Flock covering the PC ports ahead of Shaun’s full reviews of the Switch versions of the first two. Before the news and new Verified games, let’s get into the reviews and Steam Deck impressions.
Steam Deck Game Reviews & Impressions
Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid Steam Deck Review
Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid is one of my favorite Spike Chunsoft releases in recent years. Given how much I praise the publisher’s output, I wouldn’t say that lightly. After a busy June, things are a bit chilled out on the release schedule now, and Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid has arrived at the perfect time before the busy season begins. I didn’t get access to the PC version until last night, but I’ve spent the last few days with the Nintendo Switch port of Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid. I’ve enjoyed the game itself a lot with its impeccable vibes and relaxing gameplay loop. Stay tuned for Shaun’s full review as I focus on the PC port for today’s article. The 16:9 screenshots are from playing at 4K docked while the 800p screenshots are when played on my Steam Deck OLED.
Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid is currently untested by Valve, but it basically should be Steam Deck Verified as far as I’m concerned. It has Steam Cloud support, correctly brings up the on-screen keyboard for text entry, and runs without issues outside a few performance ones I will get into. I’ve put in a few hours into it exclusively on my Steam Deck OLED today, and everything works well after one specific tweak.
Before the tweak, Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid has two frame rate options right now: 30fps and 60fps. It does not support uncapped frame rates as of this writing, and the 30fps mode feels quite bad right now. In fact, I noticed some issues with the 60fps mode on my OLED Deck as well. Thanks to a tip by a friend of mine who bought the Japanese release, setting the Steam Deck’s screen (or your own high refresh rate screen on PC) to 60hz or a multiple of 60hz results in smoother camera movement. Playing at 60fps at 90hz results in camera movement that doesn’t feel good at all with the microstuttering. If you play on Windows, consider setting the fps to 59.95 using external tools for properly paced frames.
Outside the frame rate, there are no real issues with Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid on Steam Deck or PC. The image quality setting’s most noticeable difference is the draw distance for foliage and other items. You can adjust resolution from 1024×768 all the way up to 4K, adjust brightness, toggle v-sync, and adjust the display mode (fullscreen, windowed, borderless). At the high image quality preset and playing at 4K just to test, the frame rate was in the 20s. Even at 1080p, the high preset is too much to hit a locked 60fps on Deck. Playing on the Deck’s own screen at 720p results in the best experience right now.
On the control side, it has keyboard and controller support with Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid even displaying PlayStation button prompts when using a DualSense controller on PC. By default and when using the Steam Deck itself, it shows Xbox button prompts. You can rebind mouse, keyboard, and controller buttons in the key config option at the bottom of the controls tab in the settings menu.
One more thing I noticed is how the load times in certain locations were surprisingly long on Steam Deck. I swapped to Proton Experimental (bleeding edge) and the load time vanished almost completely. With this and the 60fps at 60hz setting on Steam Deck OLED, I got the best possible portable experience for Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid right now.
I also have access to the Broadcast Over Sunset DLC, but I will be covering that on its own in a separate article once I get around to playing it. For now, I’m very happy with how Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid feels and plays on Steam Deck, and will be replaying it all the way over the coming week.
In its current state, Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid’s PC port is fine, but a few tweaks will improve it considerably. After spending almost all of today with it on Steam Deck, it is definitely a massively improved experience over the Switch version in handheld mode. Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid itself is excellent, and another perfect immersive and relaxing world to sink into this month ahead of the busy season.
Tomba! Special Edition Steam Deck Review
Over the years Limited Run Games’ most important contribution as far as I’m concerned, is bringing The House in Fata Morgana to consoles in the West, and as a complete edition with content not available on PC even today. Since then, my most-anticipated release was Tomba! Special Edition which has finally launched on PC, Switch, and PS5. I’ve been playing it on Steam Deck and Switch while Shaun works on his full review of the Switch version. Since getting review codes, Tomba! Special Edition has already been updated a few times and is in a good place right now, but there are a few issues holding it back.
When you boot up the game, you can start a new game, view the museum (artwork, scans, gallery), watch interviews and the history of Tomba! through videos, check out the music player with the two soundtracks, and adjust the game options. These options include PC port features like resolution, window mode, language, vibration, soundtrack option, background color for the main menu, and viewing the credits. While in-game, you can pause and use the emulation menu by hitting R2 or rewind using L2. The emulation menu includes a few screen options, a single filter option, 3 borders or the ability to turn borders off, a reset button, save states, and the ability to quit the game. I hope to see more borders, more save states, and faster in-game emulation. Right now, opening the in-game menu for using items or anything is far too slow. I’d also like to see more filter options.
Revisiting Tomba! through its Tomba! Special Edition release and also playing the PS1 original on my PS Vita has been interesting. The load times for the menu are similar, and I was hoping we’d see better emulation on that front on Switch and Steam Deck. Barring that, I didn’t notice major issues. The museum is easily the highlight right now as a fan of the original. When it was originally announced to only include a new soundtrack, I was disappointed, but I’m glad the team managed getting the original soundtrack as an option here.
Given the extra content included, Tomba! Special Edition is very good, and I’m glad to have an official release of Tomba! on PC, but I hope Limited Run Games can address the save system and some of the emulation issues. If you liked Tomba! back in the day, this is still worth getting.
Flock Steam Deck Review
Flock from Hollow Ponds, Richard Hogg, and Annapurna Interactive is a delightful and colorful game that I’m disappointed I didn’t play sooner. It was released a few weeks ago on Steam and consoles, and I’ve been playing it on Steam Deck and PS5 for this review. I was curious to see how the lovely aesthetic scaled across hardware, and whether it was a good fit for portable play. As of this writing, Flock is marked as Steam Deck Playable and not Verified because some text might be difficult to read on the Deck’s screen.
Flock is an adventure exploration game about collecting different kinds of creatures. It is playable online or offline, and has a focus on flight as well. After a few minutes of playing it, I was sold. Working towards collecting all the creatures took a while, but you should expect to “finish" Flock in a few hours. It initially starts out simple, but grows more interesting with how you have to charm creatures or even find more of the elusive ones as the story progresses.
On PC, Flock has quite a few graphics options. It runs at 800p on Steam Deck, but getting it to run at 60fps or higher, takes tweaking. If you’re aiming for 90fps, you need to start at the lowest preset and turn a few settings up. I recommend playing with the resolution scale at 100 because Flock doesn’t look great below that. Outside that, the colorful aesthetic shines on the Steam Deck OLED, and I ended up playing Flock more on Steam Deck than my PS5.
Speaking of PS5, I love the DualSense haptics implemented in Flock. Since Flock is in Xbox Game Pass, I also played it a bit there. It runs as expected, but there seems to be a bug with audio cutting out that needs fixing. So far, I’ve not been able to test the multiplayer on Steam Deck yet so I cannot comment on that aspect of the game.
Flock is a delightful and gorgeous experience that absolutely delivered what I wanted in a new game from the Hohokum developers. It sounds amazing and is a relaxing experience almost all the way. It will not be for everyone, but Flock managed to hit every right note and I’m now working my way through it again on PS5 after playing it on Steam Deck.
Flock Steam Deck review score: 4.5/5
News and Trailers
Fate/Stay Night Remastered is out this week on Steam and Switch worldwide for $29.99. What a surprise this was. We knew it was in the works, but I expected it in 2025. Having it out this week and this cheap is shocking. I remember paying more than double that for a PS Vita physical from Japan years ago. Watch the new trailer below:
There is still more Fate news this past week with Fate/Extra Record coming to Steam and consoles next year, as a remake of the PSP original. Watch the trailer for it below:
The final bit of Fate news is Fate/hollow Ataraxia Remastered coming to Steam and Switch. This is a sequel to Fate/Stay Night, and hopefully it means we get a double pack physical with Fate/Stay Night that also sees the package arrive on PS5 in the future:
Capcom has started releasing short gameplay videos for mechanics and weapons in Monster Hunter Wilds, my most-anticipated game of 2025. Watch the most important weapon and two of the mechanics trailers below:
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves’ newest trailer showcases Rock Howard. The game continues to look incredible. Watch the trailer below:
Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is launching about two weeks earlier in the West on Steam and consoles Dragami Games has announced. It releases on September 12th in the West.
Bleach: Rebirth of Souls from Bandai Namco saw yet another trailer this week showcasing Byakuya Kuchiki ahead of the game’s release on Steam and consoles.
No More Robots has revealed Descenders Next, a new Desenders game with the aim of creating the only extreme sports game anyone needs. It debuts next year on Steam and Game Pass. It will see more sports added as long as players keep checking it out.
Kodansha revealed a few Fairy Tail indie games in the form of Dungeons, Beach Volleyball Havoc, and Birth of Magic. These are all due on Steam with Fairy Tail Dungeons out on August 26th and Fairy Tail Beach Volleyball Havoc out September 16th.
Obsidian’s Avowed is now releasing on February 18th, 2025 out of its Fall 2024 window. This is likely to give it more breathing room with the other big titles out this year.
Inti Creates has released a new trailer for deckbuilding RPG Card-en-Ciel ahead of its launch on October 24th for Steam and consoles. Watch the trailer below:
The final bit of news is Atlus’ trailer for Persona 3 Reload’s Episode Aigis showcasing Metis. Watch the trailer below:
New Steam Deck Verified & Playable games for the week
Panic’s upcoming Arco being Verified ahead of release is nice to see. I’m working on a review of it on Switch and Steam Deck. Beyond that, D3’s newest release YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES," RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM! 2, Riven, and Minishoot’ Adventures getting Verified alongside Spike Chunsoft’s Quintessential Quintuplets getting a Playable rating round up the highlights of this week from whatever Valve has tested.
- Arco – Verified
- Leisure Suit Larry 1 – In the Land of the Lounge Lizards – Playable
- Minishoot’ Adventures – Verified
- Riven – Verified
- The Quintessential Quintuplets – Memories of a Quintessential Summer – Playable
- YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES," RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM! 2 – Verified
Steam Deck Game Sales, Discounts, and Specials
There are two notable Humble Bundles on right now. The first is the board game night one featuring Wingspan, Dune, and more here. The second is the LEGO one here which is great value if you don’t already own most of these games like I do.
That’s all for this edition of the Steam Deck Weekly. As usual, you can read all our past and future Steam Deck coverage here. If you have any feedback for this feature or what else you’d like to see us do around the Steam Deck, let us know in the comments below. I hope you all have a great day, and thanks for reading.
Update: Added a bit more news on August 7th, 2024.
