You're probably here because you installed this game, gathered a friend, plugged a controller in, aaaaand...the game runs like crap, and your computer is crying. This game boasts a minimum requirement of a RTX 2060! For a cutesy otter game?! What the heck went wrong here?

From what I can tell, the game is just horrendously optimised, having the entire map loaded at once, physics and NPCs always being processed, what-have-you. On top of that, this game runs on Unreal Engine 5, which is notorious for requiring a beefy PC to run well. I'm running an AMD Ryzen 5 9600X with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 and STILL only average 45 FPS!

You'd at least expect a graphics option to turn down the quality and gain some frames, but all the game gives you is a screen resolution option, and that's it! Well, lucky for us, you can configure the graphics externally by modifying a default Unreal Engine file found in:
Make sure you've changed your in-game settings at least once so this file gets created!
For Linux players, this file is located in a different directory:
If you find this file, you'll find a ton of settings, but most importantly, the top half:

I researched what these values mean, and apparently...
0 = "Low"
1 = "Medium"
2 = "High"
3 = "Epic"

What the heck?! Everything is on maximum graphics?! No wonder your PC is crying!
Let's fix this, and make our game look like crap while doing so!
Your mileage may vary! This game is mostly CPU-bound in my case!

Let's start fiddling with the options!

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sg.ResolutionQuality (0 - 99 | default 0)



This affects the resolution the camera renders at (not your screen resolution). Lowering the quality gave me a ~10% boost to framerate.
Recommended: 50 (50% scale) strikes a balance between performance and playability.

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sg.ViewDistanceQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



This seems to make no visual difference, but still boosted my performance by ~10%.
Recommended: 0 (Low) gives you a boost while not affecting anything(?)

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sg.AntiAliasingQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



Somehow this didn't actually change anything, but gives a ~10% performance boost..
Recommended: 0 (Low) is fine.

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sg.ShadowQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



A very intensive setting, my frames increased by ~40%!
Recommended: 1 (Medium) will get you most of the way there without looking like crap.

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sg.GlobalIlluminationQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



Drastically affects lighting, with only a ~4% boost to frames when lowering.
Recommended: 2 (High) will keep the usual look.

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sg.ReflectionQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



About a 6% boost if lowered, but makes things reflect weirdly.
Recommended: 1 (Medium) will prevent things from sticking out.

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sg.PostProcessQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



Affects vignette around the screen and some colour correction. Lowering gives a ~4% boost
Recommended: 2 (High) keeps the usual look.

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sg.TextureQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



Appears to have no effect. I *think* it saved me ~80MB of VRAM, but that's practically nothing.
Recommended: 1 (Medium) seems fine.

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sg.EffectsQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



I didn't notice a difference, and there's no performance improvement either.
Recommended: 3 (Epic) as there's no reason to change it.

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sg.FoliageQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



No visual difference here either, but a ~6% performance boost.
Recommended: 0 (Low) will get you some frames.

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sg.ShadingQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



~6% performance boost for lowering BUT I've encountered an issue where any body of water in the game will flash white every second, though seems inconsistent.
Recommended: 3 (Epic) will stop the visual bug from happening.

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sg.LandscapeQuality (0 - 3 | default 3)



No difference spotted. No difference in performance either.
Recommended: 3 (Epic) as there's no reason to change it.

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Now if we set all of the values to 0, 1, 2 or 3, here's how they'd look!

(Note: for Medium and higher, ShadingQuality is set to 3 to avoid water flashing)

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Remember that resolution option in-game? That can actually boost performance quite a bit! As long as you're playing in borderless windowed, it won't actually affect your monitor's resolution, so feel free to tweak this setting. It should be noted that this game doesn't remember your resolution setting though, in fact, it doesn't remember anything! (Not even your progress.) You will have to set it every time you launch the game.

Here are some recommended presets depending on how good your hardware is!
Make sure your game is closed and then replace these values in your GameUserSettings.ini

Absolute Potato

Low spec

Mid-range

High-end


Using the Absolute Potato preset on a Steam Deck LCD took me from 9 FPS to 28 FPS!

If the game still doesn't run well enough for you after adjusting your graphics settings, it's probably time for a hardware upgrade. Check your CPU and GPU usage with a performance overlay or task manager, and see what the bottleneck is.

Hopefully you've found this guide useful! If you did, feel free to give an award! If you feel it needs improvement, leave some feedback in the comments!