V Rising is fiddly, but playable on the Steam Deck following Proton update
V Rising, the vampiric survival base builder and surprise hit of 2022 so far, has just got freshly minted Steam Deck Playable status - courtesy of an update to the Deck’s Proton compatibility software. As per Valve’s changelog for the Proton 7.0-3 update, V Rising is among several games (including Age of Chivalry and the original Vermintide) to gain sufficient compatibility with the Steam Deck for the second-highest rating of their review programme, just short of Verified.
Technically, V Rising has been lowercase P-playable on the Steam Deck since late May, when these software improvements appeared on the ‘Bleeding Edge’ branch of Proton Experimental. Now, though, the update has graduated to the main, stable Proton branch, so you don’t have to risk the potential wonkiness of a work-in-progress. I’ve given V Rising a try on the Steam Deck and it does indeed work, though it’s quick to show why it only got Playable status and not Verified.
For one, there’s no native controller support, and developers Stunlock Studios have said it’s unlikely they’ll be adding any. This makes controlling V Rising on the Steam Deck considerably trickier than with a mouse and keyboard, even with the device having dual trackpads and extra rear buttons over a standard gamepad.
Mercifully, there are already several community-made control layouts you can select and modify; in my case, the Deck automatically defaulted to a layout by Steam user Turulo. This made effective use of the left trackpad’s radial menu to equip gear or use items from V Rising’s action bar, while single- or double-tapping the rear buttons could deploy inputs that the game usually spreads across a myriad of keys.
Still, while it’s an admirable rebinding job, V Rising
Read more on rockpapershotgun.com
