Can you run Sons of the Forest on Steam Deck?

Sons of the Forest, the long-awaited sequel to the survival horror game The Forest, is now available and many players are wondering if they’ll be able to take the cannibal-infested island on the go with their Steam Deck. After all, who wouldn’t want to run around that spooky island while they’re in between errands? Let’s check out if Sons of the Forest works on the Steam Deck.

Related: The 10 best games to play on Steam Deck

How to play Sons of the Forest on Steam Deck

Unfortunately, at this time in the game’s Early Access period, the game does not run very well on Steam Deck and is not Steam Deck Verified. Many players are reporting that the Sons of the Forest is plagued with performance issues and that the game regularly crashes. However, there are some tweaks you can try to get the game running comfortably enough to enjoy.

While some performance and optimization issues aren’t limited solely to Steam Deck, despite the game’s moderate system requirements, such problems are significantly more noticeable on Valve’s handheld. Players are reporting extremely poor performance with extremely inconsistent framerates that regularly dip below 20 FPS. There are also many reports of choppy audio and excessive RAM usage that can lead to eventual and consistent crashes during gameplay. These issues could be worked out when the game officially releases, but for now, we’ve put together a list of optimal graphic settings. They might not solve everything, but they should help.

Optimal performance settings for Sons of the Forest on Steam Deck

The following graphic settings can allow you to reach close to 30 FPS max when playing Sons of the Forest on the Steam Deck. Please note you may still experience framerate dips and other performance issues even when using these settings.

Sons of the Forest Quality menu optimal settings

Draw Distance: Medium	Grass: Low
Ambient Occlusion: Low	Water: High
Fog Quality: Low	Parallax Distance: Medium
Anisotropic Textures: On	Billboard Quality: Medium
Shadow Quality: Low	Texture Resolution: Full
Clouds: Low

Related: How to use a keyboard and mouse on Steam Deck

Sons of the Forest Features menu optimal settings

Anti Aliasing: Off	Motion Blur: On
Dynamic Resolution: FSR 1.0	Micro Shadowing: Off
Dynamic Resolution Target: 60	Contact Shadows: On
Bloom: On	Chromatic Aberration: Off
Screen Space Reflection: On

Additionally, if you’re into tweaking your Steam Deck within its Linux OS, you may also consider installing CryoBite33’s amazing Cryoutilities tool which, with recommended settings, will likely improve the performance of Sons of the Forest and other Steam titles in your collection.