Rejoice, Steam Deck and couch lovers: Gloomwood just got controller support

Every time Gloomwood goes on sale I check to see if it's received its long-promised controller support. For years the answer has been "no" or "not yet", and believe me, on most normal days there's a new thread in the Gloomwood Steam forums asking about it. But as of today, the answer is "yes".

That's good news for me and many others who want to play this stealth-oriented immersive sim on Steam Deck or any other handheld PC. While Gloomwood has been 'Playable' on Steam Deck for a while, you needed to make do with your own (or the community's) jury-rigged gamepad layout, and gamepad glyphs weren't in the game. That's a very annoying way to play a first-person Thief-like with complicated controls, but such is people's enthusiasm for Gloomwood that they've been doing it anyway.

The gamepad support is comprehensive: tutorials have been updated for gamepad users, and you can rebind to your heart's desire.

The new update also adds "a new shop in the market plaza" which means nothing to me because I've been waiting for gamepad support for Gloomwood before I play it. But apparently that's good.

Gloomwood launched on Steam in 2022 and is still in early access, but players are happy—it has over 5,500 "overwhelmingly positive" reviews—and it's updated frequently. In January it got a major new map featuring the game's "largest, most vertical open area" yet.

If that's not enough, Ted Litchfield declared all the way back in 2023 that Gloomwood has already passed the "early access threshold", which is to say, it's worth playing even if incomplete. "It kicks ass, and it's definitely time to get into Gloomwood," he wrote.

As it happens, Gloomwood is currently 25% off on Steam at the moment.