This Sun Smith Steam Deck news is a nice little find for anyone who likes a game they can dip in and out of. Sun Smith, a minimalist space incremental from solo developer Ebon Forge Games, has a free public playtest open on Steam right now, and the latest update added native Linux and Steam Deck support. There’s nothing to apply for: press Join the Playtest on the store page and Steam adds it straight to your library.
The full release date is still to be announced on Steam, but the developer says the playtest will stay open until a demo arrives this winter. If you’d rather not install anything, the same build also runs in your browser.
What is Sun Smith?
Sun Smith is a finite incremental game with a definite ending, which already sets it apart from most idle games that are designed to run forever. An ancient derelict drifts in a dark star system, and your job is to wake it up and help it repair itself. You harvest power, unlock new orbits, mine ore, fabricate components, clone colonists and research technologies, gradually watching the system come alive.
It’s an active incremental rather than something you leave running in the background, so clicks and upgrades matter. Blueprints act as the prestige system: at the end of a run you spend them, and the next run opens up faster. The developer has also confirmed it’s made in Godot and that no generative AI was used.
What’s in the free playtest
The playtest covers the first six Orbits. You wake the Derelict, harvest Power and build up to clearing the first Shroud shell, then get one End Run where you spend your Blueprints and feel the next run open faster. The developer puts it at about two hours of play, with keyboard and mouse or a controller.
It has already had a few quick updates based on player feedback. Text is bigger by default and the text size slider goes higher, every fast click on the star now counts instead of some being dropped, and the Power sound is now a softer tap. The metrics consent dialog has been redesigned to be much clearer, there’s a new Credits page, and the Research Lab panel no longer covers the Pause and Blueprints buttons.
Sun Smith Steam Deck news: what to expect on the handheld
I haven’t played it on the Deck yet, so this is what I’d expect rather than a test. Valve hasn’t given Sun Smith a Steam Deck rating, but it now runs natively on Linux, and its Linux requirements specifically list SteamOS 3. The specs are tiny: 1GB of RAM, a GTX 750 or R7 260X class GPU, and just 200MB of storage. Performance shouldn’t be a concern at all.
Input is the more interesting part. The Steam store page doesn’t list controller support yet, but the developer says the playtest works with a controller, and the Deck-specific update brought larger default text and button prompts that follow the controller you’re using. Bigger text matters a lot on a 7-inch screen in a game full of numbers and upgrade panels, and the trackpads and touchscreen are there if you prefer pointing and clicking.
Steam Machine and Steam Frame
On the Steam Machine, performance is a non-issue. The bigger question is whether a click-heavy incremental suits the sofa. With a mouse and keyboard it should be perfectly fine, and the controller support in the playtest could make it a relaxed TV game too. On the Steam Frame there’s no VR mode, so it would just be a flat window, which honestly suits a minimalist game like this.
Worth trying?
As a free, low-stakes idle game for the Steam Deck, I think Sun Smith is an easy one to try, especially with a real ending and a two-hour playtest. The thing I’ll be watching before release is how far the controller support goes, and whether the store page eventually lists it. If you like free Deck-friendly puzzlers, Hexologic is free on Steam too, and there are more early looks in my coverage of the Evilbane playtest and the Rune Runners demo update. You can also play Sun Smith in the browser on itch.io.
