The folks at PressEngine were kind enough to send over a review copy of Kena: Bridge of Spirits to me. While I won’t have the full review until a few weeks from now, I at least wanted to give a brief overview of how this game plays on Deck.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is Deck Verified. And, low and behold, they finally got the rating right this time. It works well out of the box with Proton 7.0-4. 16:10 is supported. Controls work as they should. There’s even an option to use PlayStation icons if you have a PS controller connected. The framerate, at least during my gameplay time, hovered around 30 to 35 FPS on the default graphics settings.

The graphics on Deck uses the Custom preset; if we take a look at the advanced graphics tab, dynamic resolution is enabled, with limited depth of field, and Medium settings for most graphics options. A few are set to High, including motion blur and post-processing quality. I recommend keeping these settings as is. Might as well set the refresh rate to 40 Hz, because the framerate is never going to go beyond 40 FPS. Either that or set the framerate cap to 30 FPS.

Kena default graphics settings on Deck

I’ve had limited success with FSR. You can lower the resolution, but the screen won’t be in fullscreen. The left and right side of the screen will have black borders. So although the Deck will make use of FSR 1.0, you’ll have to live with that.

Keep an eye out for the battery: this game is a battery chugger, consuming around 25 W. Even setting the framerate cap to 30 FPS, according to Steam Deck HQ, won’t do much to lower the wattage. I suppose you could lower the graphics settings and the resolution, but I haven’t tested to see if that makes an impact. So be prepared to carry a battery bank with you, because otherwise, you’re only going to get about an hour-and-a-half of gameplay on a full charge.

Either DX11 or DX12 can be used. DX11 is used by default. I haven’t really seen much of a difference between either of these APIs.

Kena default in-game on Deck

I made a recording if you want to see the game in action.

That’s about all I have to report so far. I’m really enjoying the game, so expect a review soon! And have a look at Steam Deck HQ for a more detailed report on how well it plays on Deck (or have a look at Boiling Steam’s report for an overview on the desktop version).