Zelda: Breath of the Wild runs on Steam Deck without an emulator at nearly 60 FPS

The remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has just enjoyed an impressive, if somewhat controversial, launch. It will probably be quite some time before the game becomes playable on Valve's handheld. In the meantime, Steam Deck owners can turn to another classic: Breath of the Wild, which now appears to run smoothly on the Steam Deck without an emulator. At least, that's what a new gameplay video from the Savage Wind Recomp project suggests. The video was published on YouTube on November 4:

The roughly 11-minute video shows gameplay from the starting area of Breath of the Wild, and the footage looks remarkably smooth. The frame rate generally hovers between 50 and 60 FPS, occasionally dropping to around 40 FPS or climbing above 60 FPS. Overall, the recompiled version appears to be perfectly playable – at least for the first 11 minutes. Of course, the footage doesn't rule out bugs or performance drops later in the game. Still, the initial results look promising.

The apparently strong performance comes courtesy of Alpha 4, released on November 1. Alongside various technical optimizations, the update also introduced support for both expansions, The Master Trials and The Champions' Ballad. Users on Reddit are also optimistic, reporting good performance.

How to install the recompiled version on Steam Deck

To get started, users need to switch to Desktop Mode and download the Linux version of Savage Wind as an AppImage from GitHub. However, they must provide their own Breath of the Wild game files in version 1.9.0 – ideally dumped from a Nintendo Switch copy they own. Downloading ROMs from the internet without the necessary authorization is generally illegal. Savage Wind then handles the recompilation automatically, a process that takes around 14 minutes on the Steam Deck, according to the developers. Once it's complete, the game can be launched and optionally added to the Steam library. Incidentally, a similar recompilation project is also available for Tears of the Kingdom.