The First Berserker Khazan is here, offering a brand new souls-like experience. The game is built on top of the gracefully ageing Unreal Engine 4, and looks visually striking, thanks to its use of cel-shaded graphics – which also results in a surprisingly easy to run game.
This means that the game is compatible with a wide range of low-power PCs – including Valve’s Steam Deck. However, certain optimized settings do help improve frame rates, which can be found listed below.
Optimized The First Berserker Khazan Steam Deck settings
In-game settings
- Frame Rate Limit: On
- Max Frame Rate: 60; try pushing to 90 if you have a Steam Deck OLED
- Brightness: User preference
- Screen Shake: User preference
- Graphics Quality Preset: Custom; we will be using our own settings here
- Shadow Quality: Low; try disabling entirely if you are facing performance issues
- Anti-Aliasing: Low
- Render Distance: Short; higher presets are very taxing on the Deck
- Texture: Low; higher presets will eat into the Deck’s already constrained system (shared) VRAM
- Vegetation: Low
- Shading: Low; higher presets are a bit taxing
- Mesh: Low
- Reflections: Low; Low is absolutely essential in maintaining smoother performance here
- Volumetric: Low
- Ambient Occlusion: Off; try experimenting with Low as well – the differences can be quite transformative
- Anisotropic Filtering: Low
- Environmental Interaction: Off; if enabled can affect frame rate
- Motion Blur: Off; user preference
- Vertical Sync: Off; keep disabled at all times
- DirectX Version: DirectX 11; DirectX 11 is a bit more performant than DirectX 12
- AMD CACAO: Off; keep disabled
- Resolution Scale: High; can be dropped to Medium for a moderate performance boost
Steam Deck settings
- Frame Rate Limit: 60; swap to 90 if you have a Steam Deck OLED
- TDP: 15 W
- Battery Drain: 25-20 W
Expect a playtime of roughly 1-1.5 hours for the Steam Deck. The OLED version will have about 2-2.5 hours of play time instead. Frame rates are generally stable, with the game exhibiting some minor drops from time to time. In short, the game mostly runs at 60 FPS, with a periodic drop into the 50s in more taxing areas.
