Demos That Didn't

Today's article will cover several demos that I tried to play from Steam's Next Fest (Feb. 5 - 12).  Since the games ended up being unplayable for various reasons, we're just going to give only brief snippets of the games themselves as there wasn't enough material there to write an entire article about.  Maybe there could be one for No Man's Sky, but we'll try to cover as much relevant information as possible.

Pacific Drive
Release Date: February 21, 2024
Systems: Windows, PlayStation 5, GeForce Now
Publisher: Kepler Interactive
Developer: Ironwood Studios
Time Spent: 0 minutes

Not having the Pacific Drive demo not work on the Steam Deck was probably my biggest disappointment out of all of the games in today's article.  It's a game that I've been following tangentially on Twitter and Reddit for a while now, and the idea of playing a survival horror game from the perspective of driving a car at night in semi-low light environments has been one of my recurring nightmares since In the Mouth of Madness.  So then only to find out after installing the game and attempting to play it and then receiving the notification that the game can't be played because "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime" is required was a bit of a bummer.

Granted there are a couple of solutions to this fix and back in February, I didn't try any of them because I uninstalled the demo and moved on.  I recognize that demos and in-development games, especially indie games, are not going to be readily Steam Deck verified before release in the same way that a AAA studio is going to (likely) ensure compatibility.  I did perform a similar action to get Spec Ops: The Line to work on the Steam Deck, by enabling the Proton Experimental option in the individual game compatibility settings (which sounds more complicated than it really is because I was able to do it) so maybe I'll give another go at it in the coming days/weeks if I haven't already by the time this goes to print.  And as of this printing (Friday, April 19th, 2024), the game is classified as "Playable" so there is some hope.

Mark of the Deep
Release Date: 2024
Systems: Windows
Publisher: Mad Mimic
Developer: Mad Mimic
Time Spent: 0 minutes

Yup, the exact same thing that happened here is what happened with Pacific Drive.  Literally the exact same "Visual C++ Run Time" notification.  Nothing more to add.

No Man's Sky
Release Date: August 9, 2016
Systems: PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, macOS, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox S/X, GeForce Now
Publisher: Hello Games
Developer: Hello Games
Time Spent: 26 minutes

This one was weird and I never found a fix for how to get the game to run correctly.  So first off and most importantly, No Man's Sky is labeled as "Steam Deck Verified" which means that there shouldn't be any problems running the game in any way.  The control settings should be automatic and functional as far as any additional configuration that needs to happen to be playable.  Graphics don't have to be at Ultra 8k settings, just playable at a mostly steady frame rate, and having the option for an inverted y-axis is usually all I ask.  In this case, two out of three was not good enough because, for the life of me, I could not get the game to recognize that I was using a controller and not a mouse and keyboard.

I hypothetically could have hooked up my Bluetooth mouse/keyboard, but I didn't have them with me and I wasn't about to figure out how to play the Steam Deck in bed while using m/k controls at the same time.  I looked on various forums and discussion pages, but looking up config information about a year-and-a-half-old platform on a seven-and-a-half-year-old video game was rather cumbersome.  There were multiple solutions that other people suggested specifically in regards to the Steam Deck and not the Steam Controller because I got plenty of posts when searching for "No Man's Sky Steam Deck Control Config."  I did as one person suggested and used the PlayStation 4 Controller configuration, but the game still prompted me to press "E" to Initialize Expedition.  And before we go any further, yes, I know that the game frequently uses the button mechanic where you have to hold down the button and wait for the "loading circle", or whatever you call it, to fill/load for the game to recognize it as a button press.  I also tried as another person suggested, running the game in Proton Experimental (see above) and that didn't work either.

What I ended up doing as a temporary fix was to map "E" to the L4 button on the back of the Steam Deck, thinking it might be a Final Fantasy VII issue and then everything would work after I got past this one screen, but that again was not the case.  I could only move the camera while holding down the Steam button to activate the right touchpad to function as the mouse, but the left joystick or even the left touchpad did nothing.  I could fire off whatever resource harvesting gun I started with but could not move around to collect my harvest.  

So after multiple attempts, multiple control configuration settings, and multiple compatibility settings, I gave up after 26 minutes and ended up uninstalling the game (after uploading the few pictures I took).  I then said that the game being Steam Deck Verified was in fact not my experience (to which there were no follow-up questions), and that was that.

So this is the current end of our Demo Time articles, ending somewhat on a bit of a downer, but that's not to say that the whole experience itself was bad.  I was quite surprised with myself, playing through over a dozen demos in less than a week, and feeling that I understood what each game was about was a great feeling to come away with.  It was almost like playing a lot of mini-games to completion and I came away with several that I have added to my Steam wishlist and at least one game from the developer of Silkbulb Test because of the impact that the demo had on me.  In the weeks and months since Next Fest, there have been several other "Fests" that I have not jumped on quite like Next Fest, if only because I still had other full games that I wanted to play and not just more demos.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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