Machine Games’ recently released Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a graphical showcase for the in-house id Tech 7 game engine, and as such demands staggeringly high PC system requirements.
This made the game almost unplayable on Valve’s handheld gaming PC – the Steam Deck, until quite recently. A series of patches and custom Proton versions later, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is surprisingly playable on the handheld, albeit at a reduced visual fidelity.
You can find a breakdown of the best settings for the game below, along with instructions on how to troubleshoot some common issues.
Best Indiana Jones and the Great Circle Steam Deck settings
In-game settings
Screen
- Display Mode: Fullscreen
- Monitor: Leave at default values
- Aspect Ratio: 16:10
- Resolution: 1280×800; Deck native resolution
Graphics
- Picture Framing: Fullscreen
- HUD Safe Zone: Leave at Default
- Field of View: 90
- Vertical Sync: Off; always keep disabled
- FPS Limit: 60
- Edit Brightness & HDR: Disabled by default for the LCD Deck, could be enabled on the OLED version
- Motion Blur: Off; user preference
- Chromatic Aberration: Enabled
- Sharpening: 50; user preference
- Film Grain: Off; user preference
- Depth of Field: Off
- Depth of Field Anti-Aliasing: Off
Graphics Quality
- Overall Graphics Quality: Custom; we will be using our own preset here
- Texture Pool Size: Low
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Decal Rendering Distance: Low
- Global Illumination Quality: Low
- Reflection Quality: Off
- Motion Blur Quality: Low
- Water Quality: Low
- Volumetrics Quality: Low
- Hair Quality: Low
- Texture Anisotropic Filtering Quality: Low
- Vegetation Animation Quality: Off
- Resolution Scaling: Dynamic
- Dynamic Resolution Scaling Target: 60
Steam Deck specific settings
- Frame Rate Limit: 60; can be capped to 40 if you want a ‘smoother’ experience
- TDP: 15 W
- Battery Drain: 25 W
Common issues and how to work around them
To resolve most of the performance and rendering issues associated with running The Great Circle on the Steam Deck, you will need to ensure the following:
- Make sure the game is updated, with Patch 1 being installed. Patch 1 fixes a lot of the graphical and performance issues.
- Try updating to a beta version of SteamOS (3.6.21) which contains fixes that are specific to the game. Alternatively, wait a few days until the beta update rolls over onto the stable channel.
- Use a custom Proton version. Proton GE (9-21) is recommended. You can use a tool such as ProtonUp-Qt to automatically install it for you.
Expect 40-30 FPS on busier sections, with indoors hitting 60+ FPS easily. There will however, be periodic dips below 30 FPS on occasion.
