I've been porting Mooselutions to iOS. This occasion made revisit the game's camera behavior on the Steam Deck.

I was never a fan of the player-centered camera on the Steam Deck version of the game. To be completely honest, it was thrown together rather quickly. Only after launching on Steam did I then realize the game has a player base on the Steam Deck. I scrambled to put something in as quickly as I could, knowing I would come back later and improve upon it.

The old camera behavior was rather simple. It placed the player in the center of the screen and simply drew whatever was around the player.

While this can work for many types of games, it's not ideal for a puzzle game like Mooselutions where it's very useful to see as much of the puzzle as possible. On the Windows and Mac OS versions where there is plenty of screen real estate, I just show the entire puzzle. I can't do that on the Steam Deck, however, because the game's artwork doesn't look good at smaller scales.

Thus a compromise was born. The new camera doesn't show the entire puzzle, but at least it's no longer tethered to the player. Instead of placing the player at the center of the screen, the camera moves with the player to reveal the puzzle in the area where the player moves.

I defined some hard edges for each level, spaces beyond which the camera can't move. This is helpful for keeping the puzzle in focus. You no longer have these situations where most of what gets drawn on the screen is outside of the edges of the puzzle.

If you haven't played Mooselutions on the Steam Deck, I now urge you to give it a try. If you like what you're playing, leave a review.

If the game gets enough reviews, it will trigger something in the Steam algorithm that makes them verify it for the Steam Deck, and it would be great to see the game with a Steam Deck verified rating on it.