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.
Vampire survivors is a couple bucks and worth every penny. I got slay the spire balatro bundle for 13 bucks and would also recommend.
I’ve been playing this the last two days. It is great, but very addicting.
If you have another console, there are some ways to stream from them that I think are worth mentioning to pad out what you can do on the go.
In steam there’s an app called xbplay, it’s a few bucks but it made the process of streaming from an Xbox pretty simple for me, so i found it worth it.
Not in steam, but easy enough to set up (and free) is chiaki-ng, that’s for Playstation.
If you have some time for setup and obtaining the games, emudeck is good for playing old games from systems all the way up to Xbox and ps2 (ish). Though i use it for older ones.
If you like those vampire survivor games they all run great on the deck and are usually cheap (vampire survivor, megabonk, brotato, deep rock galactic survivor)
Rocket league
From there, maybe something older you never played, it’ll probably be on sale. Maybe dead rising 1 or 2, serious Sam or doom. Speaking of doom, that similar Warhammer 40k game boltgun is 60% off at the moment.
In a thread like this a long time ago someone recommended Nail’d Steam page
It’s typically 0.99 and just a silly, fun racer. It’s fun to kill some time on.
The killer app for steam deck for me was emulators. I played through some Zelda games (windwaker, OOT via ship of Harkinian). And some Pokémon. What’s nice is for emulators the battery life feels near infinite, and you can hit the power button for instant sleep. Makes picking up games on down time really easy.
Last recommendation is outer wilds. Played great on the deck and the controls are good.
I got a lot of mileage off my SD with Steamworld games, and they are very cheap right now : SteamWorld Essentials
And if you’re in the mood for puzzle platformers, the Trine games run beautifully : Trine: Ultimate Collection
If you must get something from Steam, I’d get something with great time by price ratio, like Terraria, Starbound and Stardew Valley. Or also JRPGs like Final Fantasy XII.
But from your picks, Elden Ring is the one I’d go for, mostly because it’s the one that picks my attention the most.
Otherwise, maybe you’d want to follow giveaway communities and alert profiles, e.g. here on the fediverse?
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.
I grabbed this one with a 50 dollar Steam Gift Card I was given. I love it the art so much.
You can get the following games for €50:
- Turbo Overkill
- Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
- The Orange Box
- Bioshock
- Bioshock 2
- Exo One
- PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+
- Dishonored
- Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered
This list is a good mix of awesome games, currently the total price for this looks like €49,88 in Sweden, this is amazing value!
Turbo Overkill - A fun and fast paced arcade FPS in a dystopic 80s futuristic setting.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - one of the best platformers I know, amazing soundtrack, super frustrating at times, but soo much fun!
The Orange Box - Needs no introduction, one sale for €3.90, increadible value.
Bioshock snd Bioshock 2 - Absolute gaming classics, and that is for a very good reason.
Exo One - A bit weird sci-fi game, beautiful and very engaging.
PAC-MAN Championship Edition - Take Pacman, Neon colours, fast synth beat, challenges and an online leaderbord, when these combine you get this super fun game.
Dishonored - A great game, a stealth game with magic powers, a classic!
Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-Tered edition - Do you like destruction physics? Then this game is for you!
Cyberpunk is a great choice in my opinion, especially nowadays where most of the initial shortcomings are fixed and ironed out.
There is also a linux native mod manager on Nexus if you ever want to mod the game.
Maybe list games you have enjoyed in the past ? So we can suggest games more tailored to your interests.
Nubby’s Number Factory is 2.5 USD atm! Very much enjoy that game, and the touchpads on the Steam Deck work well with it, despite it being intended for mouse controls
The Persona games are on a pretty solid sale right now if you’re into those.
I’d also second the bioware games others have mentioned. Fallout and Elder scrolls are usually heavily discounted during sales too. Same with the new tomb raider games.
Aside from that, I’d also check out bundle deals on humble bundle and fanatical if you really wanna stretch your savings!
The steam deck is also super versatile and has taken pretty much anything I can throw at it from emulation to using other launchers to access games from other storefronts and such if you want. Happy gaming and congrats on the new machine!
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.
Games I have particularly enjoyed on the deck (that I haven’t seen others recommend already) and are relatively cheap: Outer Wilds (not outer worlds), Hardspace Shipbreaker, Enter the Gungeon
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.
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.
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.
Install the PS2 games (or whatever was your first console) of your childhood and bring back old memories. For the PS2 I can especially recommend the OpenGOAL project which let‘s you play Jak & Daxter with modern resolutions. It is basically free if you (like me) still own the games anyway.
