Returnal Steam Deck best settings explained

Returnal by Finnish studio Housemarque was a great surprise as a third-person shooter roguelike and PS5 exclusive. But, pretty soon, PC owners will be able to play it as well, especially after it has been confirmed for Steam Deck. And what about the performance? Let's take a look at the best Steam Deck settings for Returnal.

Long have gamers been speculating if the roguelike shooter would be debuting on PC and, after some wild rumours last year, finally it was confirmed that indeed the game will finally be out of its original PlayStation home.

But what about those gamers who want to play it on the Deck? Let's check out how to play it on Steam Deck.

How to make Returnal run on Steam Deck

Gamers are naturally worried about the performance of this last-gen title on the Steam Deck. Clearly, with the Deck having only 16GB of RAM, it will be difficult to see it run at full graphics settings at 60 FPS. But Housemarque has been working on it to provide gamers with a smooth experience on the Steam Deck, according to a July 2022 update on SteamDB.

Since this is a thrilling action game, Steam Deck owners might want to make sure that all the settings are lowered to provide a framerate as smoothly as possible. This includes lowering shadows, lighting and ray tracing, along with activating "screen optimizations".

But still, with the Deck not meeting even the minimum recommended requirements, it remains to be seen if it will handle it at a satisfying framerate. Steam Deck 2 will be able to run Returnal, but we are not sure about the original Steam Deck.

What are Returnal's PC requirements?

Considering this is a last-gen game, its requirements can be quite high. These are the minimum recommended:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 (4 core 2.7GHz) AMD Ryzen 5 1500X (4 core 3.5GHz);

• RAM: 16 GB;
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903);
• VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) AMD Radeon RX 580 (8 GB);
• DISK SPACE: 60 GB;

Here are the recommended settings:

• CPU: Intel i7-8700 (6 core 3.7 GHz) AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (8 core 3.7 GHz);
• RAM: 16 GB;
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903);
• VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER (8 GB) AMD RX 6700 XT (12 GB);
• FREE DISK SPACE: 60 GB;

This is everything you need to know about Returnal best Steam Deck settings. But if you want to get the most out of your portable console, check out our guide on how to change controller order and how to install Emudeck.