If you're looking to play Hero Team on your Steam Deck then I've got good news, and slightly less good news:
The good news is that the game works great, and it detects when it's running on a Steam Deck and automatically configures default graphics settings to give beautiful 60 fps performance.
The slightly less good news is that it currently takes a little bit of manual setup to get it working, but it's not too bad at all:
You have to set Steam to use version 8.0 of Proton (the software that makes Windows games work on the Deck). Hero Team is built with the latest version of Unreal Engine, which is currently only supported by this latest version of Proton. To set it up:
- Go to Hero Team in your Steam library on your Deck
- Select the cog icon to open the extra actions menu and select "Properties…"
- On the left, go to the "Compatibility" page
- Turn on the option "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool"
- In the new dropdown box that just appeared select the option that starts with "Proton 8.0"
- You're done! Go back to the game in your library and hit the "Play" button
As mentioned above, the game detects that it's running on a Steam Deck and automatically configures appropriate default graphics settings, which are:
- Quality Level: Medium
- Rendering Resolution Scale: 45%
The resolution scale might sound low, but trust me that it looks great on the Deck screen, and gives you smooth 60 fps performance, while only using around 12W of power. That means the Deck will stay quiet and cool, and the battery will last for a long time.
If you want a different balance of graphics quality and power usage then you can try different settings, of course. With the quality set to 'Low', resolution scale set to 45% and the Deck's Refresh Rate set to 45 Hz (in the Performance overlay) I was able to get the power down to 8.6W(!) while still having a very good, playable experience.
Thanks very much for playing Hero Team on your Steam Deck!