Kao the Kangaroo is a pretty fun and colorful game for younger players. On Steam Deck it runs pretty well right off the bat – at medium graphics settings it provides over 40FPS and visually it looks very nice. However, you only need to change literally a few settings to make Kao the Kangaroo run much better on Steam Deck.
Unfortunately the game doesn’t offer changing individual graphics settings – we can only choose presets – low, medium, high, ultra. Apart from them we can also change Anti Aliasing, but it does not noticeably affect the performance (it’s TAA).
Kao the Kangaroo is playable on Steam Deck at medium settings with 30FPS+. Additionally, we have the option to choose 1152×720 resolution, which provides slightly better performance and still looks pretty good on a small screen. Low settings still don’t provide stable 60FPS and the visual downgrade is huge.
Kao runs on Unreal Engine 4, so you can use some tweaks for better performance and battery life. To modify advanced game settings go to desktop mode. Run Dolphin file manager and go to path:
/home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/1370140/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Local/Kao/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/
Now we will enable Temporal Upscaling (TAAU), an image scaling technology similar to DLSS and FSR 2.0 developed by Epic for the Unreal Engine.
Open with Engine.ini with text editor and put thoose lines on the bottom of file:
[/Script/Engine.RendererSettings]
r.TemporalAA.Upsampling=1
r.ScreenPercentage=70 (recommended for 60FPS and better battery life)
r.TonemapperSharpen=0.5 (sharpening filter, totally optional, but looks good for me – go max to 1.0 if you want more sharpness)
Save the file.
You can now go to Game Mode and start the game. After these changes, Kao the Kangaroo offers a very solid 60FPS on medium graphics settings. Advanced temporal upscaling technology results in little loss of image quality compared to standard scaling and FSR 1.0.
Kao The Kangaroo runs with proper framepacing on Steam Deck, so to increase battery life you can run the game at 40-60Hz. The slight stuttering is unfortunately a flaw in the game engine and cannot be reduced more.
Battery drain during recording is much higher than during normal play. On my recommended settings Kao the Kangaroo runs on Steam Deck for over 2h.