I’ve been working pretty hard over the last month or so getting Son of Scoregasm back into fighting form, and while there’s still a few things I’d like to tackle I’m happy enough to release what I’ve been working on. I’ve uploaded an update to Steam which you can download now!

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As the image suggests, Son of Scoregasm now runs on Steam Deck! It runs rather well too, full resolution at 60fps! It’s been pretty cool playing the game on it, testing away from my laptops. I’ve also added Arm Mac support.

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I’ve also been recording a series of Youtube shorts covering how to get the score medals on each level in the game. These should start appearing on Youtube later today, if you’d like to take a look you can subscribe to my Youtube channel here.

It’s been pretty fun recording them and re-visiting the game properly for the first time in years. I’d forgotten how tough some of those levels are, especially towards the end. Maybe it’s just age dulling my reactions?

With regards to the future, I’m hoping to replace the old OpenGL renderer with the new SDL_GPU api. This should hopefully future proof the game a little more.

I’m also intending on replacing the GUIs in the game. These were designed originally around the limitations of the PS Vita and as such aren’t so great on PCs. I imagine this will be a complete pain to do, but very worth it. Watch this space!

I’ll also be updating the non-steam version of the game. This is mildly problematic at the moment as i need some kind of online score service to use. In the past I’ve rolled my own with PHP and MySQL but they usually get hacked so I’m on the lookout for something else. There are a few services I’ve found online but given how much SoS earns off of steam it’s hard to justify the expense, especially given how limiting some of them are. It’s real shame itch.io doesn’t offer something along these lines. I suspect it would make a lot of people happy.

Finally, if you’d like to try the game, you can grab a copy via the widget below.

Full list of changes/updates:

  • Replaced broken online scores with Steam leaderboards. There is a global leaderboard for multi-level runs, and per-level leaderboards for score attack play.
  • Removed controller config screen because…
  • Sos now uses only SDls Gamepad library. This should mean any controller supported by steam will be configured automatically, or can be changed in Steam itself.
  • Fixed Broken dependencies on linux. Now targetting steam runtime 4
  • Fixed Steam Achievements not setting/syncing at times.
  • You can now use the controller triggers to trigger the pulse attack
  • Replaced libBass audio with SDL2_mixer as it plays better on SteamOS/Linux Various engine fixes brought to light over time.
  • Thickened the line width of the vector font so it’s easier to read on SteamDeck or other small screens
  • Default effects level is now set to high, as pretty much any PC released in the last decade should be able to run this at 60fps in 1080p. My 5yr old Thinkpad runs it at 4k without the fans coming on, so this should be fine…
  • Slightly increased the range of the pulse attack.
  • Steam cloud save support
  • Added more controller glyphs
  • Adjusted a tutorial stage so that enemies continue to spawn until the pulse attack is full.
  • Dynamic controller add/remove
  • Changed saving video settings so each machine you run the game on keeps it’s own record. This means if you play on PC at 4k, transferring your save to steam deck via steam cloud wont attempt to open a 4k window, resulting in misaligned glyphs.
  • Fixed boss health bars not displaying in some circumstances
  • Fixed buggy string replacement code.
  • fixed audio volumes not adjusting in some circumstances.
  • Re-based on SLD3, SDL3_Mixer and SDL3_TTF
  • Removed old vector font code and replaced with a UTF8 compliant font so Steam usernames appear correctly in the leaderboards, or at least so far as the font allows.
  • Made easy mode default. This game is HARD!
  • Enemies now move more slowly in easy mode.
  • Removed the sway effect on the GUI as it was causing text to be hard to read
  • Adjusted enemy score values on extinguisher level to make the medal target more achievable.
  • Arm Mac build. Mac version now require MacOS 14 Tahoe or above
  • Linux version build against latest Ubuntu LTS (26.04) and Steam Runtime 4
  • Windows build via mingw64. likely Win10 or greater
  • Fixed buggy strrep code.

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See you on the high scores!

Cheers Charlie

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