Nightingale, Inflexion Games debut titlereleases today.There’s a lot of buzz around it, but many gamers will only have one question on their mind. How will the game run on the Steam Deck? I love my Deck to death, but I’m under no illusions about it. Sure, it can run some impressive stuff (Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077, for instance), but it can’t run everything.
I’m a Steam Deck enthusiast, and while Nightingale isn’t the kind of thing I would normally play on it, I’m always curious about how big new releases will run. To that end, I was excited to hear the developers had released an update on their plans for how the game will run on Valve’s handheld. It’s always nice to know that a developer is including as many people as possible.
To be clear, the game is definitely not Steam Deck verified, so don’t expect it to run flawlessly from day one. There are, however, plans to fully support the Deck in the future. Here is Inflexion Game’s update in full.
“We’ve been getting a lot of questions in regards to whether Steam Deck will be supported at launch. Technically, Nightingale can launch and be played on Steam Deck with the caveats to controller support listed above*, but we’re not considering it officially supported at launch.
This means we will not be providing customer support for Steam Deck issues at launch as it’s considered an unofficial platform at this time. We are working on full Steam Deck support and will provide an update once that status is confirmed.
If you have a Steam Deck, you’re welcome to play Nightingale on it and provide feedback or bug reports (more details on how to do that coming soon), but please disclose that you’re playing on Steam Deck so it’s easier for our team to recreate it internally. Other versions of Linux are also not officially supported at this time, but we’re happy for you to report your bugs with details on what version you’re experiencing issues on”.
The key takeaways here are firstly, that there are plans for Steam Deck verification, but also that Inflexion Games are actively encouraging people to try the game on their Deck’s which I think is a good sign. At the very least, it’s an indication that the game is playable to some degree. It’s a shame that Nightingale isn’t officially supported on other versions of Linux, but hopefully, that’s also something we will see in the future.
One final note, there is mention of caveats regarding controller support. All that means is that right now, you will occasionally need to use the mouse and keyboard inputs via the touchscreen. Most Deck owners are used to this by now, so it’s not a huge deal. It looks like it’ll only be temporary anyway.
Good news for Steam Deck owners all around then. Hopefully, we don’t have to wait too long for the experience to be fully smoothed out.
