I've got loads of games in my backlog that I'm sure will be great to work through on the Deck. Invisible, Inc, in particular, I really liked the art style and setup, but the turn-based procgen didn't really click with me sat at my desktop, but I expect will work better when I'm on a comfy sofa. And loads of small-helping indie games. I think I'll also start Stardew Valley again on the Deck. The Long Dark I got as far as building my first fire, then fell into it and died, so I'll give that another go on the Deck.

Some games that are on my wishlist for playing on the Deck first are:
Dead Cells
Hollow Knight
art of rally
BallisticNG
Basingstoke
Bastion
Transistor
Silence
Sword of the Necromancer

So some crossover with your list.

I'll also be getting my little one his own copy of Minecraft, which he can play on my desktop and I can join in from the Deck.

I've been forming a collection on Steam of games I own which I think would play well on the Deck, this is what I have so far:

Skyrim
Orcs Must Die 2
Poker Night 2
Cuphead
Fall Guys (if EAC is working)
Blur (old racing game)
Crash Bandicoot (both remake and emulated)
Darksiders 3
Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD
Cluster Truck
My Friend Pedro
Spyro
Sam & Max Save The World
Life Goes On, Done to Death
Octodad
Limbo
Inside
Plants vs Zombies
7th Sector
Stardew Valley
Snake Pass
Jazzpunk
Short Hike
Remember Me
Pulse
Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
Roombo First Blood
Absolute Drift
Sparklite
Enter the Gungeon
Bully
Transistor
Yooka Laylee
Firewatch
Darksiders 2
Escapists 2
Feather
Felix the Reaper
Little Nightmares
Talos Principle
Witcher 2
The Witness
Nier: Automata

Lots of indie games, controller friendly games, low spec games, older games, etc.

I think point and clicks will be good, too, with the touchpad(s). Any pixel art games should look excellent.

I have no idea how it will turn out. I don't play 3d games with controllers and never have with the Steam controller either (never needed to). Something I want to try for sure are the Coma games since they don't have key rebinding, but should be very nice for a device like this. Apart from that, I'll see when it finally comes.

I've been thinking a similar thing. I highly doubt I'm doing to use it for AAA/AA stuff at 30FPS. I'm personally much more likely to play a lot of the same things you've already said. Honestly can't wait. Being able to chill on the sofa with some quality games or in bed? Yep yep yep - want.

Well, I don't play many heavy AAA games so I'm not worried about performance. Also nothing fast-paced or online so small hiccups are nothing worrying.

But I play a bunch of big strategy games, with small text, lots of buttons and dense maps that are usually very well suited to play with keyboard and mouse sitting at a desk. I very much hope those will work well with the deck, I'd love to be able to play them in more comfortable settings and would likely be the main use for the device.

But the biggest improvement would be for those games I play with a controller (or would like to): metroidvanias like Dead Cells and Monster Sanctuary, simple RPGs like Stardew Valley or Terraria, or those RPGs I never finished like Shadowrun or Pillars of Eternity, tactical games like XCOM (stretching it a bit) and Invisible Inc. And also, various emulators... Those aren't that good with a laptop IMO, and would be just more viable in a handheld.

Also, what I consider casual games. Things like digital boardgames, tower defense, match-3, sudoku, some roguelites (slay the spire, demoncrawl, loop hero). Those games are good for when I'm in the PC and take a break, but also good for playing a short match without having to sit down in front of the computer.

It honestly sounds like we're all mostly on the same page with this stuff. I just kept hearing people focus on the performance and whether it's going to play the latest and greatest. That's really not why I bought this device. The emulation possibilities are another angle too - provided you can land the ROMs, there's a whole lot of nostalgia waiting for you in a device like this!

I don't have much of a backlog left and it's mostly point-and-clicks, which I may prefer to enjoy on a larger screen, but if I do buy a Deck I can see myself replaying Owlboy on it for sure for the classic handheld feel (my last handheld was a GBA with a single Mario game :P ).

I have a few roguelites that I might play more too if I can do it on my back:
Hand of Fate
Curse of the Dead Gods
Nowhere Prophet

I wonder how well the controls would get picked up by Flash or HTML5 games.

Quoting: SalvatosNowhere Prophet

Aw, good shout. I'd like to spend some more time with that, definitely. That's also jogged my mind and I'd also like to spend a bit more time with Wildermyth and Fort Triumph, both of which impressed me when they arrived, but got overlooked because I was streaming The Forest on the GOL channel. Then I got my VR set and that was that.

Quoting: gradyvuckovicThe Witness

The Witness isn't very good, btw. It's pretty, but the puzzles kinda suck, and the whole game is trolling.

The Talos Principle is the bomb, though.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: gradyvuckovicThe Witness

The Witness isn't very good, btw. It's pretty, but the puzzles kinda suck, and the whole game is trolling.

The Talos Principle is the bomb, though.

After loving Braid, I was hopeful for The Witness and was gutted that it was Windows only. I got it in a Humble Choice a couple of years back and completely agree with your assessment. The puzzles are unintuitive and repetitive and while parts of the island are quite pretty, it doesn't take away from the fact that the whole game is like 100+ of Talos Principle's "sliding key" puzzles over and over. It's very simply not fun.

I loved both the Talos Principle, and The Witness; though I do think that they're both a little too long.

I think The Witness would've benefited from more environmental puzzles (and those that combine environmental & 'slider' — where you have to tweak the environment, or your perspective, so that the slider puzzle becomes available).

I think people who like one should give the other a try.

(I'm aware that both are also a little too heavy handed on the cultural metaphors; but it's nothing that needs to be taken seriously.)

Quoting: wvstolzingI loved both the Talos Principle, and The Witness; though I do think that they're both a little too long.

I think The Witness would've benefited from more environmental puzzles (and those that combine environmental & 'slider' — where you have to tweak the environment, or your perspective, so that the slider puzzle becomes available).

I think people who like one should give the other a try.

(I'm aware that both are also a little too heavy handed on the cultural metaphors; but it's nothing that needs to be taken seriously.)

I didn't get a single cultural metaphor in The Witness. Wandered about solving sliding puzzles for a couple of hours, then got a baffling piece of unexplained puzzle + environment, where moving the puzzle in a certain way made you hear a rumbling in the distance... couldn't understand what was happening, and ditched it shortly thereafter. It felt like a hard wall - solve this or no more progress. When I realised how little I'd enjoyed the experience up to that point, it was almost a relief to ditch the game.

Meanwhile, the Talos Principle was constantly moving me forward in a very linear way, but offering non-linear environment puzzles if I chose to do them, both by ascending the Tower, discovering hidden stars around the island, and finally by linking the individual puzzle lasers in inventive ways (although I didn't pursue that to its conclusion).

I found them to be night and day, to be honest. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend that people try Talos (or Braid), but wouldn't even offer The Witness more than 2 stars out of 10.

Quoting: scaineI didn't get a single cultural metaphor in The Witness. Wandered about solving sliding puzzles for a couple of hours, then got a baffling piece of unexplained puzzle + environment, where moving the puzzle in a certain way made you hear a rumbling in the distance... couldn't understand what was happening, and ditched it shortly thereafter. It felt like a hard wall - solve this or no more progress. When I realised how little I'd enjoyed the experience up to that point, it was almost a relief to ditch the game.

There were sound recording collectables, short quotes from various luminaries in the natural sciences, literature & religion, vaguely related to the overall theme of the area where they were found; and solving a subset of puzzles unlocked some kind of projection room where you could watch video clips. I hate using the word 'pretentious' (since it's been highjacked by anti-intellectual asshats in general); but the vague suggestions these references seemed to be making with respect to the interplay between scientific knowledge & man's social/cultural/even 'spiritual' self-understanding 'felt' kinda pretentious to me.

(& Rich & Jack from Red Letter Media made this silly parody of its 'hidden ending', back when they had a gaming channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIDX4odnT3I)

I'd still recommend the game. I got it myself when ... gasp ... it was on an epic store giveaway. (Played it on my windoze partition.)

I know exactly where you're coming from with this! I recently played through (and 100%'ed) Psychonauts 2, an absolute blast I might add, where most of the time playing it was on my Nintendo Switch.

Well, [my Switch which runs Linux that is](https://switchroot.org), so I can stream games from my PC using Moonlight.
And I think this is where these kinda devices truly shine, games like Psychonauts, Final Fantasy 11 (or even 14), and also slower-paced FPS like System Shock 2.
At first I wasn't really interested, but the more I think about it the more I realize; the Steam Deck will make everything I use my Switch for much easier. And, I won't have to stream it from my PC, it plays on the device :grin:

Didn't see this the first time round, so shamelessly jumping in now:

I'm less interested in pushing the envelope of what the Deck can run, and more interested in it as a way to play the many lower-intensity, less demanding indie games in my collection. I've got a gaming PC for the heavy stuff or the stuff that takes a lot of concentration or brainpower; I expect this'll be my go-to for when I'm feeling like a slower-paced game for relaxing. (One exception is that I'd like to try CrossCode on it [and if you've played it you know just how hectic and hard it can be!], since the elemental switching is slightly clunky on mouse-and-keyboard, but apparently easier with a game pad according to a friend with a Switch.)

Tetris!

Post moved to the shiny new Steam Deck category.

wait, what :huh:

:grin:

edit:

@liam any chance of moving this here ?

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/5076/

Last edited by pete910 on 5 Feb 2022 at 8:35 pm UTC

In preparation of my first week-long work trip (flight there and back) with the deck I've got the following games installed with the idea of it being a primarily single-player backlog-crushing device while also being able to get a jolt of nostalgia from my childhood favorites or play with my friends on the go.

On the 512GB internal nvme:

• Sea of Thieves
• God of War
• Elden Ring (Runs great at High/Max with low shadows locked @30fps)
• Tomb Raider: Underworld (Backlog)*
• Valheim (the first game I played)
• Titanfall 2 (Northstar*)

On the 512GB Samsung Pro Plus microSD card I picked up:

• Halo: The Master Chief Collection (All of the campaigns - childhood nostalgia injection)
• Spyro Reignited Trilogy
• Prey (Arkane - Backlog)
• Assassin's Creed Black Flag
• Crash Bandicoot Trilogy
• CS:GO
• L4D2
• Rocket League
• GTA IV (Backlog)
• Bioshock Remastered 1 and 2 (Backlog)
• Splitgate
• Dishonored
• 7 Days to die
• Darksiders II Remaster (Backlog)
• Fable III*
• Fable Anniversary
• I am Fish
• Golf with your friends
• Buccaneers!
• Beseige
• Clustertruck
• Snakeybus
• The Ball (Backlog)

* - game unsupported or requires drm bypass

The only two games I'd consider "missing" for me at the moment are Halo Infinite (vulkan extension limitation) and Hunt: Showdown (anticheat).

Non steam apps installed:

• Kodi (Separate USB media containing movies etc)
• Discord

Other Gear:

Headset: Bang and Olufsen BeoPlay Portal PC/PS5 Edition which works out of the box with either the USB C dongle or bluetooth but I did experience some audio cutouts while using the dongle (2.4Ghz interference?) so bluetooth appears to work the best. It's actually quite magical how SteamOS automatically switches audio to the external device once plugged in. I wanted a wireless audio solution with active noise cancellation for travel with a passable microphone and this is the best I've tried. Technically a separate app is used for configuration for the headset (iOS or Android) but it may work out of the box with just the dongle/bt, I can't say. Either way firmware updates are distributed via the app.

I don't think I'll have any problems finding something to play. If I don't feel like playing anything I can fire up Kodi while limiting the apu to 3 watts and happily watch movies for hours. I love this thing.

Last edited by drlamb on 17 Mar 2022 at 6:58 pm UTC