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I was recently gifted a Steam Deck for Christmas! If you only had a budget of, let's say 50 bucks, what would you get?

5mon 23d ago by lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/TheMinions in steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

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.

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.

Yay! Enjoy!

Slay the spire.

I really wish I liked Roguelites/deck builders haha.

What do you love?

Story based RPGs mainly. I like longer games with more interesting gameplay recently.

Recently been playing:

Stray (Xbox)

Pokémon Odyssey (iPhone emulated ROM hack)

Expedition 33 (Xbox)

Mass Effect LE (Xbox)

Pokémon Colosseum (iPhone Emulation)

Zenless Zone Zero (mobile)

Wuthering Waves (mobile)

Last night I started up my first playthrough of TW3 as well and tried out some free games I got from giveaways here on the Fediverse, like Spiritfarer.

Specifically with Zenless, I really like the combat there with the parrying mechanics.

Pillars of Eternity

Tyranny

Disco Elysium (just pirate this one, the original creators got swindled out of their company and will see no cent if you buy it, they themselves endorse the piracy)

I second elden ring from another recco. Celeste is one of my favs ever.

I have tried a couple and just don’t care for the gameplay loop as much.

I have tried Dead Cells and Hades for a couple hours.

I'm just gonna chime in to point out those are both realtime combat focused games, requiring reflex and quick thinking, which is a notable departure from roguelike. On the other hand, Slay the Spire is all about careful planning, making decisions one step at a time, taking calculated risks. There's no turn time limit, no time-based combos or bonuses, or time-gated doors that give you extra items if you go fast enough.

Oh, and also meta-progression. Hades and Dead Cells are both built with a central system of grinding out unlocks and upgrades - in slay the spire, the only meta-progression I know is having to beat the game with each character to unlock the next, and having to complete a few runs with each character to unlock all cards... And then the real progression, where you can continue beating the game with increasing difficulty levels to unlock the next.

Ultimately, this might not matter for you, and even if it does, a slow strategic deckbuilder might still not be for you, and that's completely fine.

I think its $2.50 right now. You can try it out a little bit and if you don't like you can always refund?

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

The Winter Sale goes 8 days still, so you have plenty of time. Some games in example from EA and Ubisoft require additional launcher or an account to play them. I usually avoid them.

Steam Deck Verified: 5 games including Cyberpunk for total $47,8

More interesting Steam Deck Verified games

Also have a look at games that require additional account or launcher:

Even the makers of Disco Elysium request that you don't legitimately purchase it.

Idk where this rumor came from, but the original makers have never said that lol.

I don't know if they said it, but if so, I can imagine they had some trouble with the publisher. And now the original developers maybe recommend not to purchase it. Just my guess if it is true.

Everything on that list is great on the deck except Ace Combat 7, which shouldn't be attempted with anything but a joystick.

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

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.

Second installing Heroic or Junk Store. Get those Epic freebies, but games in GoG sales as well.

As you are new with the Deck though, using Heroic does involve using desktop mode. If you have Minecraft, you can set up Prism Launcher as well. There's also EmuDeck for emulating older systems.

This is a bit more involved than just buying Deck verified games on the Steam store though. Get comfortable with it first. Watch some YouTube tutorials.

I'd heavily reccomend Balatro if you like card games.

Also Portal 2 if you haven't played it, it's a really good puzzle game. Despite it being a sequel, you don't really need the context from Portal 1 to play it through.

Forgot about Portal 2! I picked up Portal 1 ages ago on Xbox 360 haha. I will definitely grab it.

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.

It will be the 4th time I’ve bought the trilogy haha. Worth it though. Love Mass Effect so much.

Origins Xbox PlayStation

If you had it on Origin, there's no reason you couldn't get it on your deck via the EA Play app (Origin only marginally less shit) and/or Lutris.

Alternatively i would say you probably qualify for the black flag discount at this point, so maybe a vpn subscription might be worth allocating some cash to?

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 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.

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.

For $50 I'd get (afaict current prices):

This totals now $48.18. If you have an additional dollar to spare, I'd also recommend to get something to scratch that retro-gaming itch:

That's now $50.91 in total.

Balatro and Slay the Spire both play great on the Deck and have amazing replayability.

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.

My retro slanted suggestions:

Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters is one of the greatest games of all time and it’s free. There’s a Steam version, but I think you lose a few of the original music tracks in exchange for easier management. They’re also crowdsourcing a sequel, about 30 years later.

https://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php

I’d also recommend UFO 50. It’s a treasure trove.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/

Ur-Quan... isn't that the one that stole the plot from mass effect?!!! /s ;) Glad to see it mentioned... great game. So many hours spent playing that in story campaign but also super melee multiplayer back in the day. Great soundtrack.

The soundtrack is absolutely golden. It’s truly one of the greatest games ever made.

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.

Hades! It's an incredible game, and especially good on deck.

Titan Fall 2 is one of the greatest shooter ever made, it’s constantly at 8$

I would have suggested too, but it requires Origin client and it must run in the background while playing. And requires an EA account on top of it. The game is rated Steam Deck Playable, so not really the best experience on the Deck.

Which is a shame, because the single player campaign is so nice. I don't know if the online component still works.

Afaik it installs a gutted version of ea app (fka origin), online is still playable but if it ever becomes unplayable then get Northstar client and enjoy a shitload more freedom and mods, including whole gamemodes

I have it on console, didn’t know it was a pain to play on steam deck. What a shame

First, emulators. Then Demos, so meny Demos/Trials. Hell, on a Deck? Even some Free2Play stuff would be less insufferable than the same on my phone.

... but you need to figure out what you want to spend that money on for yourself. A lot of good stuff is on-sale right now. Check out isthereanydeal.com

Emulators, you say? Which… uh… which ones?

Emudeck for (basically) all of them https://www.emudeck.com/

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.

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.

Does somebody already mentioned Grim Dawn? Diablo II like ARPG. From what I’ve heard well playable on the deck. Check out the mentioned 3rd party sites first a good deal, the all in one (two expansions) set should be around 30ish bucks.

I really enjoyed Grim Dawn, I dont replay my games (quite a few in my backlog and very limited time) but if i'm replaying any, Grim Dawn would be the one.

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.

Slay the spire for sure

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!

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

get Cyberpunk. The game is great for the current price (also check gog, ITAD)

You're getting all kinds of recommendations for Steam games. But what about free games? In desktop mode, the "discovery" app let's you install programs, including games.

There's tons of free games. I'll admit a lot of them aren't the highest quality. They are mostly open source clones of more popular games.

One game I recommend in particular is Super Tux Kart. (Tux is the mascot of Linux, and SteamOS is Linux based.) It's a kart racer game. It's one of the highest quality open source clones out there, though. Great graphics too.

If you own Minecraft, the Prism launcher will allow you to run it in the Deck. Just go into the steam menu in desktop mode and click "add non stream game" to add any apps you install this way to your steam menu. Now they can be launched in handheld mode as well!

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.

I would probably get:

  • Megabonk (£6.37/$8.61)
  • Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition (£5.27/$7.12)
  • A Game About Digging A Hole (£3.17/$4.28)
  • Power Wash Simulator 2 (£16.99/$22.96) or Katamari Damacy REROLL (£15.99/$21.61)

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.

Both valheim and project zomboid can be had fire less than $20 each. That leaves some cash left over for a couple dollar games that look interesting.

Both games are amazingly fun and you can get a self hosted server set up for fun with friends... If you have another computer available.

Second for valheim. Amazing game

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.

Kingdom come deliverance really drew me in on the Deck. Currently €6.

dragon age origins, inquisition, veilguard. all on pretty hefty sales right now.

all excellent games. Hades and Hades 2 are also great ones.

Terraria is very cheap and is always a blast as well.

Origins is awesome, but does it have controller support for the deck?

honestly you can make any setup work with steam input. I even play WoW with it.

both docked and handheld mode.

@TheMinions
Hades & Hades II

I actually don’t like Roguelites haha

@TheMinions oh, then don't get those, then. 😄

I generally dont either, but these are some of my favourite games because the narrative progression is really good and interesting. I'm not saying that they'll be for you, but it might be worth your consideration.

CP2077 is a great game! Runs really well on the deck. But so is the Witcher 3 which also runs really well on the deck! Personally cp2077 would be the one I pick.

If you have a little extra money and want to tinker a bit, you can install Decky and the plugins Power Tools, Decky LSFG-VK from decky and Lossless Scaling from the steam store. Decky LSFG-VK needs Lossless Scaling to work and I think it is around 5 bucks. With the above installed you can get around 100 fps in both cp2077, The Witcher 3 and many other games. I haven't found a game that these plugins dont work on and increase performance and playability albeit at the cost of battery drain.

I hope you many happy hours of gaming on your new deck. I really love mine!

You might check out some of the different game bundles available right now, they can quickly give you a lot of good games to play for cheap.

One month of humble choice ($15) will get you Nine Sols, Like a Dragon Gaiden, Streets of Rage 4, and a bunch of other games.

Fanatical has a ton of build a bundle available right now for their winter sale. Of those bundles, the Prestige, Best of Platinum, Winter SuperStars, and Play on the Go bundles are all especially recommendes.

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’re on a budget, make sure to redeem the weekly free games from Epic and Amazon if you have Prime. You can play them all on your deck via Heroic Games Launcher.

Get Rimworld, and write a letter to your friends and family that you wouldn't see them in a while. Consider spending the rest of the money on IV stand so you stay hydrated.
Rimworld is a drug, it should be classified as a controlled substance.

can confirm, wife is addicted and so was I for a while. I relapse every so often.

Not sure what games you like, but I will suggest Terraria to almost anyone. 50% of currently on steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/Terraria/

Satisfactory sucked up about 3 months of my time and thinking about it as I type this I really want to start a new play through.

Megabonk, Balatro, or Cyberpunk are my rotation. Hunt those steam sales

Axiom verge and ori bundles are great

Lies of p, wildermyth, silksong, divinity original sin 2, caves of qud, persona 5 royal, baldurs gate 3

Doom (2016) or Doom  Eternal. Both fantastic games, run on anything and I saw Doom Eternal on sale foe 10%.

The Messenger is cheap right now and such a good platformer!

Tactical Breach Wizards!!! Then save the other $40ish for the next sale.

Oxygen not included

Factorio

These two will consume your life for so long and they're both on sale :D

Factorio is on sale, I thought that never happens?! Also, it's not on sale for me.

Factorio is nice, but maybe not the one to pick at this budget.

Oxygen Not Included is a solid choice, though.

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.

Maybe list games you have enjoyed in the past ? So we can suggest games more tailored to your interests.

I've had great fun with Jedi Fallen Order and Hollow Knight / Silksong

was gonna recommend considering piracy, but since its against the rules I will respect that and recommend some of my favorite games i play on the SD and my PC instead:

Re: flying the Jolly Roger

I probably will for more expensive games I own on other platforms, such as Jedi Survivor and Expedition 33.

My main issue is that I actually don’t have a ton of data storage since I opted for the very 256 LCD model and need to buy a larger SD card or do some physical tinkering to replace the SSD.

From what I've seen replacing the SSD really ain't that hard. But the SD card speeds are not that bad for many lighter games. 

was gonna recommend considering piracy,

Yeah, my first thought was modchip!

I don't think you know much about the steam deck haha

It is an actual computer with Linux on it, you can even install windows if you're dumb enough to do that. You do not need a modchip to pirate or mod games on it. You do it like you would on any other Linux pc with wine.

Read switch.

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.

I also was gifted a Humble Bundle game for Batman Arkham Knight.

Then perhaps redeem the game and complete the bundle at https://store.steampowered.com/sub/320795/to play Arkham Asylum first?

I got Overgrowth a few days ago for my Deck and it is very fun, especially when it only cost 6€ to get it

There's already a very long list of excellent suggestions , so I'm going to chip in and add only two others. Tunic and Tinykin. Both are Deck verified and on sale right now.

These are both really cute looking! I’ll have to pick them up eventually!

I hate using a joystick for camera control, so I only play 2d titles on my deck. Mostly DRG: Survivor, Tribal Hunter (no, really. It is excellent), and Hades.

BG3 is another good bet too.

Honestly at that price point I'd pick up a few cheap but addictive games like balatro and into the breach

Hades 2 is absolutely amazing as well

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?

My favorites on the Steam Deck so far are Marvel Cosmic Invasion (arcade style Beat 'em Up) and Deep Rock Galactic Survivor.

Get UFO 50 and get 50 games in one.

Biy Sleeping Dogs, it plays great on the steam deck and its now 85% down to 3 euros.

Great story, graphics still hold up.

Furthermore consider Distance (Race like game), the precinct, hot brass, coromon.

"A man who never eats pork buns is never a whole man!"

"All Brands are real, I got special supplier"

I would look at indie games like nobody saves the world and look for all the emulators and roms I could get my filthy mitts on.

If you don't have it yet I would spend some of that money on a few months worth at least of mulvad VPN. It would... Open some doors.

If you haven't already got it, Hades

  • Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
  • Ys X: Nordics

They look terrible, but are incredible stories and were optimized for Steam Deck. Ys I & II Chronicles also plays great and are fun, though even the remakes feel older. Other Ys games are also fun.

Age of Mythology Retold I think played well and had good controls despite being an RTS.

Halo Master Chief Collection seems to do pretty decent. I played through Reach and most of the first game at least for the single player and enjoyed it.

American Truck Simulator is surprisingly fun and the studio puts ridiculous effort into optimizing for Steam Deck.

Other fun games I've played a lot on Steam Deck:

  • Just Cause 2
  • Overlord 1, Raising Hell, & 2
  • Warhammer Inquisitor Martyr
  • Gas Guzzlers Extreme
  • Warhammer Space Marine (the original)
  • Sniper Ghost Warrior 1 & 2 (1 has not aged well but was still fun)
  • Saints Row the Third (the original)
  • A good amount of Lego games
  • Pinball FX3
  • Fortix
  • Far Cry 2
  • Viking Battle for Asgard (no cloud save, be careful and back up game saves)
  • The Saboteur (probably one of the greatest forgotten gems of the PS3/X360 era, I think it required minor tweaking to run on Steam Deck)
  • Broforce/Expendabros
  • Sir Whoopass
  • Hustler
  • Dungeons of Sundaria
  • Shadows Awakening
  • Awesome Pea
  • Bears, Vodka, Balalaika!
  • Disfigured
  • Bayonetta
  • Redeemer
  • Blasphemous
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Megabonk!

Crashlands 2 is pretty good and quirky.

I am currently juggling both Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077, and I honestly couldn't choose one to suggest over the other. They're both different games but amazing Journeys. I've put about 150 hours in both. I've beaten Cyberpunk and highly suggest the DLC. I'm maybe halfway through Elden Ring and it's so hard but once you grow it, the difficulty becomes satisfying instead of frustrating.

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!

Hollow Knight is great. I chill out with Vampire Survivors a lot.

Warframe is free to play and very little content aka only certain cosmetics are behind a pay wall. You can easily earn in game currency via trading with other players once you start opening relics. Tons of content and runs great on the deck!

So I had a huge backlog of games I never got around to, now I just snatch up games that are 90% off, odds are they will play great on the deck. There are a lot of F2P games that play well.
Path of Exile plays OK, you're not going to be setting league records but you can casually play.
OpenMW with total overhaul mods probably has the most hours played for me, that game is endless.
Ori and the blind forest and Hollow Knight have been a blast. I just started Silksong and love/hate it.
The entire BioShock series was great, got the whole series on GoG for like $10 a while back.
Primehack is awesome.
Divinity original sin 1 and 2 play great.
Just wait for stuff to go on sale and there's unlimited fun to be had.

If you like retro, you can’t go far wrong with UFO 50. 50 retro-style games with a modern twist for £20 normally, but £15 on sale now. Ridiculous value for money, because I don’t mean mini-games, i mean games.

Just in general, I’d go the “several indies” route, rather than the “single AAA” route.

Monster Hunter Rise is great on handhelds like the Deck.

Dragon Quest XI is one of the best JRPGs I ever played, and it has an extensive demo (about 10-15 hours) that lets you transfer your save game to the full game.
Problem is the save transfer didn't work on Linux last time I checked about 2 years ago. Maybe Valve fixed this since. Otherwise if you have a Windows PC you could transfer the save game there, but keep in mind you won't be able to download the demo anymore once you've purchased the game.

Welcome to the joys of Steam OS!

I would set aside $0.00 of the $50.00 for my free copies of Luanti (Minecraft clone) and Mindustry - Factory building tower defense.

You can buy Mindustry for around $5 on Steam or Itch.io to support the developers, but it is also available for free in the Arch software center (by briefly rebooting the SteamDeck into desktop mode).

That’s like, my favorite price man!

If you’re not one of these people who has to have everything running at 60fps to enjoy it, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered is only £26.99 ($29.99) at the moment, and is a great game for hours of play, albeit you have to turn the gfx down.

I'll second this. Great game. Definitely more than playable on SD.

Forbidden West struggles a bit more, definitely on the edge of playable, but I still enjoy it 🤷‍♂️ When I'm home I'll usually stream from my PC though, looks better. You really sacrifice a lot for Forbidden West on SD.

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

More or less what I’ve been doing since I made the post haha. Pretty much none of these games were FPS outside of Half Life 2 and Portal 1 and 2.

Great suggestions in the comments, especially in regards to great sub-10 dollar indies and the use of Isthereanydeal, but I'd also like to throw in a recommendation to not forget about Desktop mode.

If your budget is tight, the deck basically offers a portable PC, including emulated games up to GameCube era and other free non-steam things. Things like emudeck and heroic game launcher can also add shortcuts to steam mode, although I didn't really use the latter since I didn't use Epic or GoG.

Rimworld works weirdly well on the Deck, if that's at all up your alley. Hades (both I and II) and BALLxPIT are two of my recent faves.

I was looking into BallxPit. Seems really cool.

I grew up playing Brickle on an Apple II, I think, so brick breakers have always had a special place in my heart. Add roguelite elements, and boom, I'm all over it.

I have fond memories of playing Brick Breaker on my dad’s blackberry as a kid. Hahaha

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.

Dome Keeper