Arctico is sort of like Subnautica without all the underwater dread. Walk into a body of water in Arctico and you’ll suddenly be in a kayak, cruising over the calm blue surface toward a fishing spot. It may be a game about expanding a research base in a lonely, hostile environment, but it’s a much more relaxed one, where you’ve got a team of pettable dogs to pull your sled right from the off.

Though it came out of early access in 2020, Arctico has had some significant updates since then. There was a base-building update in June of this year, with a bunch of improvements, adjustments, and optimization to the base-building mechanics, and now there’s been another update out of the blue, adding controller support and Steam Deck verification.

The menus for building and accessing your inventory have all been revised to be more controller-friendly, text size tweaked for the Steam Deck version, in-game keyboards added, and the sled’s input system “adjusted to better support joystick input.” Basically, it should play fine with your thumbs on the sticks rather than your hands on a mouse and keyboard.

A few years ago, Nat Clayton took Arctico out for a spin. As someone who once spent six months training sled dogs, her standards were high, but Arctico’s chill vibe impressed her. “The low arctic sun casts a soft light,” she wrote, “sky turning red in the twilight hours, a low soothing hum complementing the howling wind and crunching snow. The vibes are impeccable, and more than a little bit reminiscent of the wonderful Sable.”

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