My Steam library basically only consists of Witcher 3 and Spiritfarer. I also was gifted a Humble Bundle game for Batman Arkham Knight.
I’m debating on getting Elden Ring and Cyberpunk (both without DLC).
Marvel’s Spider-Man and FF7 Interograde also look like a good value right now for 40 bucks total.
Edit, ended up doing the following:
Becoming a Steam Family member with my dad and buying the following.
- FFVII Retrograde
- Mass Effect Legendary
- Divinity 1 and 2
- Caveblazers
- Portal 2
- Hollow Knight
I also set up emudeck and transferred all my GBA, GBC, and GCN games that I have ROMS for.
UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves is about 14 bucks and has around 60 hours of some of the best third person gaming I’ve played. Initially I thought it was just a Tomb Raider clone, but both the game mechanics and story are very polished.
Plus it played buttery smooth on my system, though it depends on your settings: https://www.protondb.com/app/1659420?device=steamDeck
The downside is that it eventually ends.
Might be worth a pickup at some point — I had a PS3 back in the day and bought these for full price and played the hell out of them all.
I forgot about Hi-Fi Rush: https://www.protondb.com/app/1817230
Pretty cheap right now and pretty unique gameplay as well.
I really wanted to like Hi-Fi Rush. I had it on gamepass for a few months before my subscription ended but I’m just so bad at rhythm games haha
This is 500+ hours of gameplay:
- Half-Life 2 ($2)
- Portal ($2)
- Portal 2 ($2)
- Psychonauts ($1.5)
- Psychonauts 2 ($9)
- Subnautica ($8)
- Hollow Knight ($8)
- Silksong ($16)
- Hades ($8)
- Disco Elysium ($4)
- The Witcher 3 ($3)
- Terraria ($5)
- Left4Dead 2 ($2)
- Kingdom Come ($5)
- Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 ($6)
Given how many games I absolutely loved are on this list, I feel like our taste in games has a huge overlap and I’m gonna have to try the others
Grim Dawn is < $4
I recommend getting some indie and pixel art style titles instead of just going for AAA. Reason being many of these are cheaper ($5-10, sometimes even less) so you can try different genres, and these titles also tend to sip battery so you will get lots of gameplay time.
Examples I have enjoyed, in no particular order-
Animal Well
Celeste
Stardew Valley
Vampire Survivors
Caveblazers
Balatro
Slay the Spire
I love when I come across a recommendation list like this where they’re all among my all time favorites and one thing I’d never heard of. Caveblazers doesn’t look like my kind of thing but given the context and the sub $1 price I guess I gotta check it out
Animal Well looks amazing! And I’ve heard of Celeste. Been meaning to pick that one up.
In this same vein, I believe Moonlighter is still on sale for 90% off, so $2. Can’t recommend enough. Like if binding of Isaac was also a cozy shopkeeping sim.
Tomb Raider Survival Trilogy for $7.19
Shadow of Mordor/War for $6.99
Prodigal for $1.49 - Zelda plus date sim
Toem for $3.99 - gotta photograph em all
Crosscode for $5.99 - SPMMOOTY
Saint’s Row 4 $2.99
Vampire Survivors for $3.74 - everybody is legally required to have a copy
20 Small Mazes for $0 Doronko Wanko $0
My main recommendation is “don’t put all of your money into a bunch of PS5 AAA games”. PS5-ish games fit “if we turn all of the settings down, and render in 1/4 rez, and then AI upscale, and still your battery only lasts an hour”. It often isn’t a great experience here.
A strength of the Deck is in delivering an endless back catalog of PS4 and prior styles of games. Another is in bringing forward a ton of indie games that can’t win at “marketing”, can’t afford to develop PS5-level visuals, so they fight like hell on “mixing up new and interesting gameplay” and “price”.
That’s a fair point. I’ll keep that in mind while I play.
A bit dated but definitely worth a look: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/decktop100
Check this out as well: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/steamdecktopplayed/pastyear
Also helpful: https://steam250.com/steam_deck_verified
And finally: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/?min_rating=90&min_reviews=2500&os=steamdeck
Stuff I can recommend for the Deck without the slightest speck of doubt:
I’d recommend Protondb as well https://www.protondb.com/explore
Be sure to check out Steam’s own “great on deck” category in the store. Each game will also have an indication from Valve on the quality/playability with regard to the Steam Deck
I have been browsing here and ProtonDB religiously since I suspected I’d get a SD for Christmas.
You definitely should mention what types of games you like, but I second Stardew Valley, Celeste and Balatro either way. They’re great titles.
If you like cozy games like Stardew Valley, I recommend Mystia’s Izayaka. You can get the bundle with all the dlcs for cheap right now.
Some other great games I can’t recommended enough are Ikenfell, Cult of the Lamb, Later Alligator, Persona 4 and Crow Country.
Also, get an SD card and put Emudeck on it.
Edit: Forgot to mention: you can go on steamdb to get a list of free games that are Deck verified.
Not a game recommendation specifically but a money extending protip.
Head over to ITAD and make an account. Then you can get notifications when all the games you’re interested in go on sales from legit resellers (including steam itself). As well as when there’s free games to be had. https://isthereanydeal.com/
Edit: also… if you collect the weekly freebies from epic games you can install heroic games launcher on the steam deck to play those.
Yeah that sites great, you can set thresholds for each game if you want to wait until it’s over 50% off or whatever before getting notified. It also imports your steam wishlist.
Edit: also… if you collect the weekly freebies from epic games you can install heroic games launcher on the steam deck to play those.
True, though you don’t get the existing cloud saves so if you’ve started a game already it’s a little annoying.
It also imports your steam wishlist
Can also directly import from gog, hb, and fanatical. EGS is on the todo list also once they have an api or even just a public facing library. All this time and egs is still pretty bare bones on features.
True, though you don’t get the existing cloud saves so if you’ve started a game already it’s a little annoying.
That’s annoying. I wonder how hard it would be to just copy or use some kind of sync to move the files yourself.
While the Deck is capable of running some big AAA games, I personally find that it shines in the low-power, “chill” games that you can play for a while, put down, and come back to when you’ve got some more time.
I’m a big fan of RPGs, so my #1 recommendation is Sea of Stars. Dragon Quest: Builders is also good, along with it’s sequel, which is arguably better.
A good multiplayer game with endless hordes of monsters vs. your magic is The Spell Brigade.
You may not know this, but the Deck can also be plugged into a TV or monitor, and with the help of a USB-C hub, can support a keyboard and mouse too! If you go that route, then I can’t recommend Dyson Sphere Program enough. Ooh! and Timberborn! It’s both adorable and beautifully designed.
If you’re more of a 3rd-person shooter type, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is fan-fucking-tastic (my favourite series of all time) and it’s currently on sale for £5. There are 3 games in the series, and make sure you start with the first one! You don’t regret it.
Finally, note that you’re not bound to the Steam store if you don’t want to be. If you install the Heroic Launcher for example, you can get DRM-Free games from GOG for example. Sometimes you’ll find that games are available on both platforms, but cheaper on one of the other, and GOG games don’t come with controls on how many people can be playing it at the same time.
I loved playing the Dyson Sphere Program, but the controls without mouse and keyboard felt impossible to me, so I stopped playing it altogether since gaming mostly on the Stema Deck. Have you got any tips for making the controls work better?
Sadly, no. That game is definitely keyboard-only. Though I have played successfully with a goals Bluetooth keyboard and mouse in the past.
Some games just don’t lend themselves well to a controllers based input.
On the chill games topic; Reus 2 has most of my deck (train commute) play time if I’m honest. Great chill puzzle/strategy game.
Vampire survivors is great for the vegetable state of mind play and usually cheap as fuck.
Core keeper is a great builder game,
Valheim
The old final fantasies like 4 5 6 7 9 10 if you can get them on sale. I’ve had nothing but success on steam key websites.
Mortal sin is amazing.
Slay the spire
Lego Star wars The Skywalker saga is so cheap right now and trust me its so fucking fun
Half life 1 and 2 and half life 2 episodes 1-2
Halo MCC
Portal 1 and 2
Team fortress 2 (probably want a mouse and keyboard for though)
Hogwarts legacy runs surprisingly well on deck too and it’s like $6 right now
Make sure you have a game with sustenance and a game you can veg out on.
The old final fantasies like 4 5 6 7 9 10
This slight against FFVIII has not gone unnoticed.
I think 8 isn’t a good game. I have the original disks, played through it entirely when it came out and realized that I never wanted to play it ever again after beating it. Can’t recommend what I think is not a good game.
LEGO harry potter, years 1-4 is also great, as is LEGO Indiana Jones.
I’ve put a disgusting amount of hours into Emberward. It’s Tower Defense but no mtx and has a really fun Tetris blocks gimmck to build lanes.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2459550/Emberward/
Yes it’s early access but it doesn’t matter, the game is nearly done anyways, also on sale currently. There’s good Steam Input profiles for the Deck. Dev is adding controller suppport for 1.0 but this doesn’t really matter on a Steam Deck.
I’ve been replaying Dragon Age Origins at work modded via Nexus Mods and running DAO-Modmanager via WINE under Steam’s compatdata prefix.
If you never played Stardew valley that could be worth it. Hitman is also a good option - the levels are sandboxy and you can spend a lot of time figuring them out.
Kingdom come deliverance really drew me in on the Deck. Currently €6.
Hades is a great roguelite and is on sale for $9.75CAD right now. If you like that then there’s also Hades 2. It has a really cool story built into it which at least at the time was more unique in the genre.
Try to find slightly older games and they’ll have steeper discounts.
