Hi all, with the Steam sale on I’m looking for new things to play on the deck.
I can kick it off with a few recommendations of my own that I’ve been playing, even if they aren’t new games:
Outer Wilds - Amazing exploration game that is best played without looking at any guides etc. I use the 40hz option to play and it runs great, not dropping below 40fps.
Hades - You’ve probably heard of this one! Runs perfectly on the deck, easy to just pick up and attempt a run.
TUNIC - A charming RPG in the vein of the old Zelda games, this one is unique in that you find pages of the ‘Instruction Manual’, which you’ll need to read to help you figure out puzzles within the game. It’s awesome, would highly recommend on the deck!
Let me know what you’re all playing so I can grab some bargains!
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Disco Elysium is my favourite game ever and it is on sale for 10£. If you do not mind a point and click and dig the ethos of the Fediverse, don’t miss it.
Oh I actually own this but never got round to playing it, thanks for the reminder!
For me, the ideal Deck games are ones that don’t lose anything when scaling down to the small screen and APU.
I’ll never understand people playing high visual fidelity games at 30fps on Low settings on Deck, it that person has a more powerful PC to play the game on.
Meanwhile, something like Civilization VI basically loses nothing when played on Deck.
Hades and Tunic both make sense to me as Deck game picks.
The opposite end of the spectrum are people who feel they need to set everything at Ultra. I found that’s as unnecessary as Steam Deck users setting everything to low. You can often drop settings to high or medium without significant hit to fidelity.
The small 800p screen of the Steam Deck allows for more unnoticeable concessions on top of that.
And even with all that, if you can’t hit 60fps, 40fps at 40Hz refresh feels much better and smoother than 30 and allows for more flexibility on settings.
At the end of the day, I’ll take a smooth consistent 30 over unstable 40 or 60. But I won’t bother if I also have to do so at the lowest settings. So far, I haven’t run into anything so demanding I have to compromise both significant fidelity and frame rate.
I get people don’t like to tweak everything and just want to play. Totally fair. But the Steam Deck is great for it, if you bother.
You’re right, if you have the PC to play certain games on then the experience is definitely better, but it’s still good to be able to play on the go, or, in my case, I have a 6 week old daughter and I can play the deck while she sleeps in my arms!
I’ll never understand people playing high visual fidelity games at 30fps on Low settings on Deck, if that person has a more powerful PC to play the game on.
I did this with Cyberpunk 2077 despite having an RTX 2080 in my main PC. My reasoning was that I wanted to play from my couch. Now I could have just use the Steam cast feature to play it from my gaming PC, but I didn’t see the point in mucking about with it (especially given that my house has terrible Wifi… I should fix this lol).
I always thought Stardew Valley was like, the perfect game for the Deck.
More recently I’ve been trying to get into Wasteland 3, which is working decently well.
It really is.
Deus Ex, the original, it’s only $0.97, easy to run, and it’s infinitely replayable (especially with the Randomizer mod)
Symphony of War is a good Fire Emblem clone. Subnautica is older but plays wonderfully.
If you like Hades you might consider getting all the other supergiant games, Pyre and Transistor are $4 and Bastion is $3 and they each kinda have shades of what ended up becoming polished in Hades
I picked up two games from my wishlist, and they both work great on my Deck:
- Hi-Fi Rush (2023, Tango Gameworks) is a rhythm-based character action game set to a 00s/10s indie rock soundtrack
- Alien: Isolation (2014, Creative Assembly) is a stealth horror game that’s one of the first to convey the feeling of the original “Alien” movie rather than the more action-oriented “Aliens” movies that came later
I picked up Monster Hunter Rise it’s Steam Deck verified and should run a lot better than MH: World!
Been thinking of picking up MH:R so maybe now is the time.
It’s great, it’s my favorite MH game so far. Great atmosphere and a lot of variation in monsters compared to World. The hunts are also a bit shorter since you know the monsters location from the beginning, and it feels perfect as a mobile game because of it.
I really recommend Dredge! It only took me three days to beat it but it was fantastic. Fun little fishing game with great atmosphere
I would second dredge. I don’t know what it is about sea based games but between this and Dave the diver, I’ve been really impressed. Just absolutely fun and great looking games.
I would second dredge. I don’t know what it is about sea based games but between this and Dave the diver, I’ve been really impressed. Just absolutely fun and great looking games.
Dragon quest xi is perfect for the steam deck
RE-engine Resident Evil games and remakes!
The outer wilds and Tunic are fantastic games, i’d add Moonlighter to the list. I hear a lot of praise for Hades but it does not look like my cuppa tea.
Outer wilds will be in the next humble choice bundle fyi
It’s actually Outer Worlds (Obsidian’s Fallout-ish game) and not Outer Wilds (solar system explorer game) that’s coming to this month’s Humble Choice.
The Souls trilogy is on sale (first time in two years) and all three work great on Deck.
One thing I would caution with them is that Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin (and I believe 1 remastered) don’t have cloud save syncing. If you like playing on your main desktop and your steam deck, you have to manually move the saves over. Looking at the store page, it looks like 3 has the same issue.
Funnily enough, the original DS1 Prepare to Die edition and Dark Souls 2 both have cloud saves
DS1 remastered has cloud saving now. It definitely wasn’t a thing at launch, but I’ve been playing it on my steam deck over the past few days and my saves synced just fine. I think it might’ve been added after they brought back the online servers. I haven’t gotten around to replaying 2/3 since the return of online, but they might have cloud saves too.
For DS:R the cloud saves worked for me. 🙌🏼
I can definitely recommend Valheim which is currently 40% off and runs on the Steam Deck. It’s one of the best games that I ever played, especially co-op. It has combines several genres and has many great mechanics. For example food gives you additional hp and stamina. If you forget to eat you won’t die, but if enemies attack you, you propably will. Since it’s early access the developers are still developing it and are constantly adding new contents. But even now the game has so much content for many, many hours.
