Ludus: A Gladiator Story news & patch notes

The gate opens wider today. LUDUS: A Gladiator Story now supports nine languages, so far more players can step onto the sand in the language they think, dream, and curse in.

Every branch of the story — every choice, every route, every ending — is now playable in English, Italian, German, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese.

What's included

Language

Interface

Full Audio

Subtitles

English

✔

✔

✔

Italian

✔

✔

German

✔

✔

Spanish — Spain

✔

✔

Spanish — Latin America

✔

✔

Portuguese — Brazil

✔

✔

Russian

✔

✔

Simplified Chinese

✔

✔

Japanese

✔

✔

Full menu and interface localization plus complete subtitles ship in all nine languages. English retains full voice acting, and every other language delivers the entire narrative through fully localized text.

Every localization was built to preserve the things that make the story land: the cold, forward-driving voice; the weight behind each choice; the way a vow made in chapter three pays off in chapter eleven. Bracketed conditions, character beats, and choice labels were all carried over so the branching logic reads exactly as intended — and every chapter was checked to make sure no route was dropped, shortened, or rewired along the way. If you played it in English and again in German or Japanese, you'd be walking the same story, not a thinner version of it.

That's the standard we held to: not just "translated," but the same game, in your language.

Play it your way

Whether you're weighing the lanista's offer in Milan, planning the revolt in São Paulo, or standing before the crowd in Tokyo, the arena now meets you where you are. Head into Settings → Language to switch, and pick up right where the sand is waiting.

More languages, more players, the same brutal choices.

See you on the sand.

We have submitted Ludus for Steam Deck compatibility review.

We built Ludus with handheld play in mind from the start, and we are confident it will pass. Here is what we have done and what you can expect.

Controller support is complete. Every action in the game — advancing prose, selecting choices, opening the Chronicles panel, managing saves, navigating menus — is mapped to the Steam Deck's physical controls. The default controller layout requires no remapping. You will never be asked to reach for a keyboard.

Text is legible at handheld size. The interface was designed with readability as a first principle. All text renders well above Valve's minimum size requirements at the Deck's native 1280×800 resolution, and the three-tier text size setting in the Settings panel — Small, Medium, Large — lets you push it further if you prefer playing docked on a television.

Performance is not a concern for this genre. Ludus is a narrative RPG. It runs at a locked 60fps on the Deck's default power profile with no frame-rate drops, and the battery draw is low enough that a full chapter session — roughly 45 to 90 minutes depending on reading pace — fits comfortably within a single charge.

A note on language support. The narrator voice-over is in English regardless of your selected text language. If you are playing in Simplified Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, or Greek, the prose and choice text will display in your chosen language while the audio track remains in English. This is consistent with how the PC version works.

Save anywhere. The ESC button opens the Chronicles panel mid-session, where you can write to any of the four manual save slots before putting the Deck to sleep.

The demo is available now. If you want to try Ludus on your Deck before the compatibility review is complete, the demo covers the full first chapter and runs under the same conditions as the full game.

We will post an update here once Valve's review is complete. If you run into anything in the meantime — a layout issue, a button mapping that does not feel right, anything — post in the community hub and we will look at it.

The arena is waiting.