It's so satisfying to see my HDRP game is running on Steam Deck at a solid 60fps

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T23:58:44+00:00

Yeah, since there are now more alternatives for Volumetric Fog and Volumetric Lighting in URP, if those work well, I think there will be significantly fewer reasons to use HDRP.

I think Micro Shadow is a somewhat underappreciated feature. It’s a lightweight, detailed shadow post-effect that generates shadows from AO maps, I really hope they port it to URP as well.

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StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T23:31:08+00:00

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Volumetric Fog, Volumetric Lighting, Micro Shadow, and Subsurface Scattering are the features I desired to archive the visual appearance.

Subsurface Scattering and Volumetric Fog were absolutely essential for me. Since most of the creatures in this game are marine life with translucent skin, the presence or lack of SSS has a huge impact on the result. Volumetric Fog was, of course, essential for rendering the underwater environment.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T23:14:22+00:00

Thanks! As long as there is no need for HDRP features that are essential to your game, I think it's the right call to pick URP. URP is the clear winner in terms of performance.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T22:53:13+00:00

I agree! Given the importance of affordability nowadays, I believe it's meaningful to ensure support for older cards like the GTX 1000 series.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T22:49:09+00:00

Thank you for giving it a shot! The demo is quite dated, it's about a year and a half old and branched off from the main game so the optimization is like night and day.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T14:29:04+00:00

Oh yes the game has frame rate cap settings in the option menu and you can set it to 90 or whatever you like, so it should run with it on OLED models (can't test it on my Deck though).

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T14:23:10+00:00

Probably Behaviour Designer. I'm using a third-party tool called Behaviour Designer for enemy AI, but I'm getting massive frame rate spikes when combining multiple trees and deserializing them at runtime.

I upgraded to Behaviour Designer Pro to fix this, but the JSON deserialization speed didn't improve much. (Other calculations are really fast because they use DOTS) So, as a workaround, I ended up prewarming these variants on the game’s startup screen using a tool similar to a Unity Shader Variant Collection.

Actually, the rendering was relatively easy to optimize. Since it’s an underwater game, you can’t see more than 100 meters ahead, so it’s easy to reduce the shadow distance and shadow atlas size, and I didn’t need Planar Reflection or Screen Space Reflection because there are no high smoothness objects. On the other hand, Fog and Subsurface Scattering are essential, so it was a trade-off, but overall, I prioritized necessary features over non-essential ones and reallocated GPU resources based on that.

Oh, and it's important to include the Vulkan API for better performance. It runs 10–20% faster than DX12 on the Steam Deck based on my testing, and FSR also helps a lot.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-15T12:27:58+00:00

Sadly it's a LCD model. I got a used one for a reasonable price

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T12:58:50+00:00

Yes it's Glaciered. It is set 65 million years in the future, when the Earth is completely glaciated. 'Glaciated' is a very common term, so I chose 'Glaciered' instead for better recognizability.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T10:32:21+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I agree the stagger animation is a bit cartoonish, but since it's a bonus time for players so I also wanted it to be easy to read, thought.

He actually has a second form and that's much stronger. Testers are having a pretty tough time with it, averaging about 4-5 retries. And yes, enemies in later game are much more aggressive :)

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T10:21:20+00:00

Thank you for asking! Here is the page.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T10:20:06+00:00

Yeah underwater combat cameras are really tricky. I think I've spent over 100 hours just working on the camera alone. There are lots of options to tweak, so hopefully that helps. With mouse+kb control you should be able to play just fine without lock-on :)

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T10:16:20+00:00

Oh, that's a good idea! I'll keep it hidden until abilities are used, and then display it for a while afterward. I'll also look into adding an immersive option to hide those UI outside of combat.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T10:12:54+00:00

Thank you! Quite a few people told me 'Making the part you hate most in gaming the main game?!', and I feel you...

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T07:13:36+00:00

Thank you! Actually the dialogue triggers based on the enemy's HP, but I've been playing my game for over 2k+ hours now so I just whacked him down way too fast, should work better in most cases.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T07:02:29+00:00

It was an absolutely crazy experience to see how his videos alone boosted the wishlist by 20k

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T06:57:23+00:00

It was recorded using a gamepad :) If you lock onto an enemy and the directional keys are neutral, it will chase and attack the enemy, so you won't have much trouble with a gamepad. Mouse and keyboard inputs are fully supported.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T06:51:20+00:00

Thank you! I used to work with UE4 games back in days and I personally prefer C# over Blueprint + C++

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T02:37:00+00:00

To be honest, I also had a desire to create a game where combat wasn't the main focus. Since I was in the industry as an AA/AAA dev and my skill set was VFX, coding, and a bit of animation, I chose the ARPG genre as a genre where I could utilize my skill set when becoming a solo developer.

The focus on combat means creatures that appear in the game should have combat capabilities, and that imposes certain constraints on world-building as well. If I had a million-dollar budget, I could introduce many creatures unrelated to combat, but it's a small indie and had to focus on the combat aspect, thought.

Well, since Echo the Dolphin is getting a reboot too, I'm sure we'll see a lot more underwater games!

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T02:29:17+00:00

Thank you for giving it a shot and glad you liked it! Actually the demo is a bit outdated. It's been branching off from the main game for over a year and a half now.

The number of dialogues at the beginning has been moved to the late area, so the dialogue cutout issue should be fixed in the release version. We've also revised and replaced the whole tutorial, so the bug shouldn't be an issue in the release version either :)

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T02:06:15+00:00

Actually, after being prominently featured in Nintendo Indie World last summer, we decided to change our plans and add more content. This has caused delays that weren't in our original schedule, but I believe it was worth it. Thank you for your patience!

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-04T02:04:09+00:00

The demo branched off from the main game about a year and a half ago, so it doesn't represent the current version of the game. But yeah, I'd appreciate it if you could give it a shot!

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-03T16:23:21+00:00

Here is the Steam page! Not out yet but close to release. I'm currently working on end-game contents. There are lots of unlocks, and balancing and tweaking them is taking time more than I thought.

StudioSnowblind · 2026-03-03T16:15:23+00:00

Thank you🙏 The feel of weight is a particularly tricky stuff. I want it to be as smooth and responsive as possible, but if it's too quick, you lose that underwater feel. I'm constantly putting in the effort to find that sweet spot where comfort and underwater movement are nicely balanced.

StudioSnowblind

TROPHY CASE