The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Best Steam Deck Settings

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth feels like a wild dive into the mind of creator Edmund McMullen. Featuring polished arcade gameplay inspired by '90s-era console titles and McMullen's penchant for the grotesque, this delightfully disgusting top-down dungeon crawler was a massive indie hit and ushered in the rise of the roguelite/roguelike genre.

Fortunately for us Steam Deck owners, The Binding of Isaac is also a total blast on Valve's portable gaming device. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the game runs perfectly out of the box (it came out more than a decade ago, after all), but there's still room for improvement. In this guide, I'm giving you the settings for the best battery life when playing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth on your Steam Deck. Let's get right into it!

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Best Steam Deck Settings

It only takes a quick glance to realize that The Binding of Isaac could run on a potato. That was the case even back when it was first released in 2011, so expect nothing but a perfect gaming experience on your Steam Deck.

Although the default Proton version should be fine for most Deck owners, a few players have reported issues getting the game to run. You can fix that by trying out different Proton versions. Many users are saying that Proton Experimental works flawlessly.

On top of great performance, you'll find that mods work perfectly, too (yay, PC gaming). So, if that's what floats your boat, enjoy sinking into the endless customization options the community has made available on the Steam Workshop.

Max Battery Life Settings (Native@60fps | ~4h)

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth doesn't have any graphics settings, so there's nothing we can do in the game to improve performance or battery life. That means we'll have to dive into the trusty Steam Deck Performance menu to extend battery life.

Again, The Binding of Isaac is not a demanding game, so we can get away with extremely low TDP limits. In the video linked above, YouTuber MajorBen is using a TDP of 3 Watts and still enjoying 60-fps gameplay. From my own experience, at that TDP, frame times start to get inconsistent around the mid-game, when the screen starts to fill up with enemies. I've found that a TDP of 5 Watts will get you a truly consistent 60 fps throughout the entire game.

In all, you can expect to get around 4 hours of battery life on a single charge with these configurations.