You can play Lethal Company almost perfectly on Steam Deck. Essential gameplay actions like collecting scrap, opening doors, and using items work flawlessly. But, to type in the terminal, you have to use Steam’s virtual keyboard (Steam + X). Aside from that, it’s a smooth gaming experience.
When you start playing Lethal Company on the Steam Deck, you might notice something is off. The commands displayed on the screen aren’t always what they do on the Deck. From my experience, if you’re in the terminal and need to exit, the game will tell you to press Start, but that doesn’t work. You actually need to press Select. Another case is when you’re holding an item and the game shows that pressing G drops it, but there’s no G button on the Deck. You’ll need to press B instead. You probably realized how important it is to memorize the buttons and what they do, right?
Here’s all you need to know about playing Lethal Company on Steam Deck.
Lethal Company’s layout controls on Steam Deck
- Left analog stick – Move character
- Right analog stick – Move camera
- A – Jump
- B – Drop item
- Y – Pick up items or move ship equipment around
- L1 (hold) – Rotate equipment
- Y – Place down
- X – Interact (pick up items, open doors, start the ship, etc.)
- Select – Exit terminal/monitors, open and close game menu
- L2 (Hold) – Sprint
- R1 – Scan
- R2 – Use items (like turning on a Flashlight)
- R3 – Crouch
- Y – Pick up and move ship equipment around
- L1 (hold) – Rotate equipment
- Y – Place down
- D-Pad – Switch items in your inventory
- Left trackpad – Acts as D-Pad
- Right trackpad – Acts as right analog stick
- Steam + X – Open Steam Deck’s virtual keyboard
A minor hassle you’ll have to deal with, if you decide to use the terminal, is that whenever you type on the terminal send a command, the virtual keyboard closes. You have to press Steam + X another time to reopen it and type again.
Lethal Company performance on Steam Deck
Lethal Company performs quite well on the Steam Deck, with an average of 40 fps outdoors and a solid 60 fps during facility exploration. In my playthrough, I noticed minor frame drops in certain situations, like when Circuit Bees attacked me. But generally, the game runs smoothly, hovering between 40 and 60 fps.
A downside is that Lethal Company doesn’t offer any graphics options for tweaking performance.
Should you play Lethal Company on Steam Deck?
If you’re fine with the occasional minor performance hiccup and prefer to steer clear of ship duty, then playing Lethal Company on the Steam Deck is a great choice. But if you’re after more precise movement and better terminal use, I’d recommend sticking to a computer with a mouse and keyboard.
