Looking for those games that you may have heard about but never tried until you got a Deck. Or old games on systems you never had that you’re trying for the first time. Or new AAA games that just released in the last year or two that you picked up for the first time specifically to play on Steam Deck and have kept you glued to the device.
I’m trying to reinvigorate my old, nostalgic love of gaming and hoping to find the perfect Steam Deck + addicting game combo.
Factorio. Godanmed Factorio ruining my life.
The factory must grow
Some friends and I once went to visit one of their families for spring break back in college. We made the mistake of starting a server.
The spring break ended. We left the room maybe twice a day to eat food, around 7pm and 4am. The factory grew. I think there was a family there, I can’t remember though.
This game is already addicting enough for me on PC, can’t imagine the addiction in a portable console.
And with the trackpad and back buttons and customizable controls it’s genuinely a treat to play. I don’t miss the keyboard/mouse. I even tracked down an old steam controller when I’m playing at home on the big screen.
Fallout 4 for me was great on the deck. I’ve had it for years but only when I got the deck did I actually play it.
Also streaming Baldur’s Gate 3 has been fantastic as well.
Oooh, I forgot you could stream from your PC to the deck!
The messenger and stardew valley are perfect steam deck games. I suspect hades is too but I put too many hours into it on PC before I got the deck.
Hades is a killer game for the Deck, I just can’t get used to using stick controls. I put like 280 hours into M+K, it’s a hard habit to break and Heat 11 isn’t exactly the best place to learn a new control scheme.
My partner loves it though. They started the game on the deck so the learning curve is easier.
Vampire Survivors
Dopamine go brrr
What is there to do in the end game? I’m at the point now where I can get 1000+ golden eggs and I don’t even know how much gold per run, if I want to, but the whole thing is just fairly easy and repetitive. No matter which character I get, I can use pretty much the same OP combo.
I guess I could just go back to making the game hard again by disabling eggs, the OP weapons, and other things, but then what’s the point since a lot of the fun is in unlocking things?
Or am I just “done” the game, now, and it’s time to move on to Soulstone Survivors or Brotato?
Subnautica.
I played it when it was beta, could not finish it then.
It runs pretty good on the Deck, and I alternatively play it on the Deck docked to a tv on the living room, and on my PC.
It’s a good game.
For me it was Brotato.
I’ve been on a “bullet heaven” binge recently and have put so. many. hours. into Brotato in the last week or so.
State of decay 2. I never really got into it until I got the deck.
I beat Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines for the first time on Deck. KBM controls bound to the system really did it for me and since it was a low spec game it ran flawlessly. And the game’s reputation holds up (well written and engaging but janky lol)
Ooh, I’ve never heard of this one. I’ll have to check it out!
Of games that I’ve ONLY played on the SteamDeck, I think Dead Cells is probably my favourite.
I really like Kingdom: Two Crowns on my steam deck.
Not a new discovery, but I rediscovered Torchlight 1 and 2. The Steam Deck controls make it a lot smoother to play than a mouse.
I’ve heard D2R is really good on the Steam Deck, so I think I’ll start with that one. Or maybe PoE.
I’ve ordered an OLED Deck and I’m looking for games with fun gameplay loops that don’t take too much attention since I’ll most be playing while watching TV with my partner. ARPGs seem like a perfect match.
I really enjoyed Hero’s Hour, it’s eeriely similar to Mount and Blade but… pixel.
My gaming history is so diverse that I only recently realized that certain games have baises to certain styles of console now. Growing up I played a lot of NES and SNES games on an old hitachi laptop with the roms and a control scheme I didn’t know how to chance from PGUP PGDN and arrow controls. Never the less, my platforming 2D top down exploration feeling kicked in. Then the PS2 introduced me to 3D games and the different dynamics, but it was stolen so I got to explore the world of flash games until the Wii expanded the PS2’s dynamic games with depth of controllers. (Honestly it’s not talked enough about how Wii Sports is a form of AR.) Anyway, now as an adult the last nearly decade of gaming has been done mostly on PC, with just a few Nintendo games here and there between the 3DS, Wii U and Switch.
And through all of this, Nintendo has had very strong 3rd party titles - Retro City Rampage, Shantae, Shovel Knight, I mean the list could go on for forever. But what’s interesting is none of these kinds of games, even some dear classics like Phantom Brave/Disgaea, none of them fully appeal to me on PC. When I use the Steam Controller it helps immensely, but even then it can take some work to really feel “right”.
It wasn’t until I got the Steam Deck that I realized this connection between the smaller/portable nature of certain games to certain consoles. I mean, I was aware of it in the sense that I preferred certain games for certain consoles, but I never realized just how strongly “retro” games just need to be on a small screen with gamepad controls - and I loooved playing flash games on mouse and keyboard but the nostalgia of the screen format is just so overpoweringly nostalgic.
Anyway, all this to say - I have found a previously “nearly useless” part of my very large game library to be no longer “nearly useless”. There are now so many games that I have some interest in to at least try, because playing them on the Steam Deck just feels right.
Forager, Hero’s Hour, Monster Sanctuary, Blasphemous, and Yakuza (refound love for this one) are my 2022 replays top Steam Deck games. However during that time I also ripped all my Switch games to format shift them to the Steam Deck, so Marvel’s Ultimate Alliance 3 also got a lot of playtime.
Within the last year I’ve come across Smile for Me, Guts and Glory, and Narita Boy which I wouldn’t have normally played either.
Mostly I’ve used the Deck to continue playing my primary games on the couch or on the go. Elden Ring and RDR2 look and play fantastically once you tweak them a bit.
Smaller games usually run perfectly out of the box. The only ones I’ve played exclusively on Deck so far are Super Pilot (indie F-Zero), Ultimate Chicken Horse (Mario Maker-ish), and Mark of the Ninja.
Persona 5 Royal
Maybe I’ll finally get around to playing the Persona series with my Steam Deck…
Bloodstained is a top contender, I can’t say I first discovered it on the Deck, but it just feels right on a handheld, in a way that it didn’t with controller on desktop, and the Switch just isn’t good enough to run it at a passable framerate.
