Painkiller creator and Witchfire creative director Adrian Chmielarz believes that every developer should try to support Valve’s Steam Deck if they can.
Speaking to FRVR following the recent 0.8 update for his early access roguelike shooter Witchfire, Chmielarz discussed the decision to release a Steam Deck specific graphics option for the game earlier this month.
As the game crosses over 500,000 sales ahead of its 1.0 release next year, Witchfire still has additional content and optimisations to come, but the developers have already put in effort to specifically support Valve’s popular handheld.
“Steam is not really a shop. Steam is a community.”
Witchfire creative director Adrian Chmielarz
“We wanted to support Steam Deck simply because, just to support, an additional extra machine,” Chmielarz explained. However, the developer explained that supporting the lower-power, smaller screen device ended up making the entire game better as a result.
“Steam is not really a shop. Steam is a community,” he continued. “And so we wanted to make sure that that community is basically served… but what we’ve learned, which was kind of surprising, is that making your game compatible, like Steam Deck Verified, actually makes your game better.”
Alongside additional optimisation, Chmielarz explained that the handheld nature of the device made the team realise their UI was too small, so a scalable UI feature was developed that benefits players on handhelds, monitors and even large TVs. It might be one simple addition, but this feature improves the experience for everyone.
“That’s just one example of how, I think every developer, if they can [should support Steam Deck],” the developer continued. “If you’re making some, I don’t know, some super duper complex game using some engine that’s not the fastest in the world, then maybe you will have [problems], maybe don’t support Steam Deck because, you know, 15 frames per second is not fun. But other than this, everybody should attempt to support that machine because it would make their game better.”
Chmielarz is not the only developer that’s seeing the benefits from Steam Deck support. While Chmielarz’ team is quite small, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 team has also confirmed its plans to focus on the handheld to improve the game on all platforms.
As for the rabid popularity of Valve’s handheld, Chmielarz explains that the reason is because “so far, everything that Valve touches turns to gold.”
“These guys really, really know what they’re doing,” he continued. “So I think that when people see Steam Machine, they automatically assume there’s more to it, that this is some really well-thought-out product, which it probably is, and it’s going to be a decent price, and it’s going to work, and it’s going to be greatly supported, and I don’t need to worry about a thing.
“And I think that that’s the same thing with Steam Deck. It works. It’s a really good machine. It’s a really good machine. It works,” they concluded, explaining that the Steam Deck offers consistency to PC gaming, a godsend for a platform that isn’t known for being the most stable place to play games.
Witchfire is available now on Steam and the Epic Games Store in early access with the game’s huge 0.8 update now available for fans to enjoy. O
