How to get 30 FPS in Soulstice on Steam Deck – performance guide

Soulstice launches with no problems on Steam Deck, but the game’s performance is very poor. Even on the lowest graphics settings, the FPS drops to 20 very often with constant stuttering. I managed to achieve a fairly stable 30 FPS, so take a look at this guide.

SteamOS settings

Find Soulstice on your game list, click on it and go to “General” settings (gear wheel icon), under “Launch Options” type the command:

dxvk_async=1 %command%

Still in the game profile settings change the resolution to 1024×640.

Go to the “Compatibility” tab and set “Force the use of a specific Steam Play Compatibility tool” to the latest available version of GE-Proton. I tested the game on 7-35.

How to install ProtonGE?
Go to Desktop Mode and download the “ProtonUp-Qt” application in Discover. Run app and add latest version of ProtonGE to Steam. Go back to Gaming mode and in compatibility tab of Sunday Gold set “Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool” to GE-Proton.

Thanks to these actions stuttering will be minimized, and at very performance-taxing moments framerate will be more stable.

In SteamOS, set 60Hz with 30FPS limt. Also, enable FSR with 2-3 sharpness (personal choice).

In-Game graphics settings

Go to Settings>Graphics and set:

SCREEN MODE: Windowed Fullscreen (thanks to this, the AMD FSR enabled in the SteamOS settings will work)
VSYNC: No
FPS LOCK: Unlimited
ANTI-ALIASING: High (we use a scaled resolution, so I do not recommend setting lower than high)
SHADOWS: Low
POST PROCESSING: Low
TEXTURES: High
VISUAL EFFECTS: Low

With the above treatments, Soulstice should perform much better on Steam Deck. During cutscenes, there are occasional drops below 30 FPS, but the gameplay itself is very stable.
Of course, the game still consumes a lot of resources, so battery life is about 1.5h (25W).