Kingdom’s Deck Steam Deck Compatibility and Performance

Kingdom’s Deck is a city-builder and deck-builder game where you try to transform your small hamlet into a much bigger kingdom, while facing nightly onslaughts from outside invaders. It’s very much a turn-based strategy game lite, (think a simplified Age of Empires), but with a randomized deck of cards containing everything from soldiers and defense towers to housing and resources. The game is very approachable and easy to learn, making it perfect for short sessions and ideal for the Steam Deck.

Don’t let the unsupported icon fool you, as Kingdom’s Deck has great performance on the Steam Deck. Right out of the box, it runs at pretty much a locked 60FPS, with no changes needed to Proton or in-game graphics settings. There were a few occasional drops that happened when opening a menu or pausing and unpausing the action, but they were brief and barely noticeable. Running at 60 FPS and with a full battery will give you approximately two and a half hours of battery life. I chose to lock the FPS to 30, which, for a game like this, doesn’t effect gameplay and will yield close to an extra 45-60 minutes of battery life.

Upon launching the game, the controls default to Steam Deck keyboard and mouse settings using the touchpads and joysticks. This gets you pretty close and the game can be enjoyed just fine this way. With a few tweaks, like adding keyboard shortcuts to the four back paddles and changing the face button commands, you can have a nearly perfect experience on the Deck. I shared my settings as a community profile, which can be downloaded when you start the game.

Overall, Kingdom’s Deck is an enjoyable experience on the Steam Deck and a game I’d recommend to anyone interested in turn-based strategy or deck-building games.