Soulmask is storming up the Steam charts with its interesting gameplay and performance in Steam Deck. Today, we are going to look at everything about this survival game, including its demanding gameplay, wonderful graphics, key settings, and controller mapping tweaks to optimize the gameplay experience on Steam Deck.
A Thriving Genre Entry with Online and Offline Play
Soulmask stands out as a great addition to the survival genre, with both online and offline gameplay available. Players may practice their skills as lone wolves in offline mode or team up with friends online. This game has 46,000 daily active players, which highlights its popularity among gamers. However, players will struggle to recall previously joined servers. The only solutions at this moment are to take note of the servers manually or to restart the game completely to refresh the server list before going back to play online mode.
Brutal Gameplay Punishes the Unwary
The world of Soulmask is just brutal and unforgiving for players, therefore you are expected to learn quickly. The enemies are relentless and love teaming up against the players who only care about attacking. When dealing with enemies, tactical planning comes into play, because luring them out of camps is recommended to avoid being overwhelmed.
Best Visual Settings for the Steam Deck
Despite challenging gameplay, Soulmask has impressive graphics. It runs smoothly on Steam Deck, but a few tweaks of the graphics settings are still needed to get the best performance.
Basically, you need to set everything to medium with some minor adjustments. Set the resolution scale to 80% and shadow and post-processing effects on low. This will help to maintain a stable frame rate. Don't forget to turn off V-sync as well.
When it comes to frame rates, setting this to 30 fps is highly recommended. Though you can still set it to 40 fps, this small adjustment is decent enough and will get you to a more stable gameplay. Then, it is recommended to cap the frame rate from the Steam Deck to the same fps as well. With these adjustments, you should be getting a very stable performance, even if the frame drops can’t be avoided in demanding scenes. However, you can still expect a consistent performance throughout the gameplay.
With the above settings, the game consumes around 16 Watts. You can expect to run for 2 to 4 hours of gameplay on the device.
Custom Controller Mapping Enhances Deck Experience
Since the game was designed for a mouse and keyboard, playing it with a Steam Deck controller needs a bit of a custom layout. Good for you, there is another option to play it easier way, which is to download a community-made layout called “Soulmask SDG Keyboard (WASD) and Mouse”. This hugely helps with the control which gives more comfortable navigation. However, it is important to understand that the latest versions may not always export the layout correctly. In this case, binding the back paddles to the map button and F1 and F2 keys is recommended.
A Promising Early Access Title
With the combination of challenging combat (which looks similar to Monster Hunter) and awesome display, Soulmask comes as a great addition to survival games. The option to play the game offline makes it perfect for Steam Deck players, and this is also supported by the community-developed controller mapping to make the game easier to play. If you are a fan of the survival genre and want to test your gaming skills, this game is a must-have.