[Discussion] What are you playing on your deck? - February 2025

Potioncraft: Alchemist Simulator. Love the mechanics, it's like what I wished Strange Horticulture would be when I first picked it up.

Dynasty Warriors Origin. Plays surprisingly well on the deck for the amount of enemies on screen. To my surprise, the game even has a Steam Deck preset.

Balatro - trying to beat black stakes on blue deck currently

Black Book - fun little deck building game with surprising depth when it comes to lore, I'd day the amount of game mechanics makes it a wide but shallow game, it's not a bad thing, it's easy to get into, easy to play, and gives just enough to have this RPG feeling

Deep Rock Galactic Survivor - haven't played in a long time so I just discovered the new biome, beautiful, and I like the new challenges, I still think it's the superior "survivor" game, but I'm afraid once it comes out of early access, the genre as a whole will be out of fashion

LEGO Bricktales it reminds me of Captain Toad but with brick building puzzles. Good fun.

Animal Crossing for the Switch, at the moment.

Hollow Knight; I'm playing it for the first time and I've progressed enough to get the true ending, but I'm going to do some of the side content before I do. Probably not 100%ing, I've already struggled to get this far, but I'll try to get every charm and finish the Troupe before finishing off my playthrough. It's a great game, and I'm definitely excited to play Silksong, if that manages to release within my lifetime.

Three games I played recently:

Among Ashes - Somewhat short, but ended up being quite good. It does a good job at building tension and generally doesn't rely on cheap jump scares.

10 Dead Doves - One of the few games I that made me want to play through a second time. Interesting story, some funny moments, emotional moments, good voice acting. I highly recommend this one.

In Sound Mind - This was sitting in my backlog for a while and I wasn't really expecting much, but I ended up really enjoying this one too. The ending even had me feeling emotional, which is very rare, but

Dragon's Dogma 1

My coworkers keep telling me to do The Witcher. I'm interested in doing civ7 but also c/patientgamers lol.

I have been liking Halo Wars, MCC, Hollow Knight and Hades on the deck.

Just got Risk of Rain 2 and am enjoying it much more than I thought I would! Usually shooters aren't my thing.

A bit of Balatro and Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip when i want a short session.

Have also installed Borderlands 2 to try out Stick Flicking. Aiming is going great, still trying to learn to turn around in hectic situations. But at least the steam controller configurations are great.

Cassette Beasts. I tried Brotato its okay but I'm not as much of a fan.

I've mostly been emulating lately. I've been playing Quest for Hat, which is an Earthbound rom hack, and Donkey Kong Country 2 since those have RetroAchievement's achievement of the week and achievement of the month respectively.

Thinking of firing it up and trying Kirby air ride with my wife. My daughter is way to Needy for me to play anything real.

Playing Baldur's Gate 3 again, after a several month hiatus from it. But this time I'm doing Honour Mode for the first time, currently working through Act I.

It's tough! Especially early game. I decided for some hard-to-kill character builds, to try to avoid team wipes.

Playing as Gale, target build is Drac Sorc (Cold) 1, Abj Wiz 11, specced on INT. Idea is to get utility cantrips, scales, and Armor of Ag from sorcerer, everything else goes into making Gale an Arcane Ward tank. He sprints into melee combat, the enemies kill themselves on the Armor of Ag retaliation when they hit him, rinse and repeat as much as needed.

Also having Karlach be the BarBearian, taking half damage from everything as she rages, and healing with that heal mace you pick up in Act 1 every time she clocks someone with it. It's working well so far, hopefully it stays viable as the game goes on.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 and I'm overwhelmed by the dexterity required in combat. KC:D has a really dirty combat system: Even if you're doing everything right and unless the fight is decided very quickly, you're gonna get some serious hits.

Last game I played was Lorelai. Why did nobody tell me how frickin awesome that game is? I thought it was a generic jumpscare 3d horror indy. But it's actually really cool horror adventure. And the previous title in the series The Cat Lady is even more badass.

Got Lorelai some time ago for free on GOG and never played it because of above reservations. But somehow it always stayed in my head so I decided to actually try it and was blown away.

I am flying the shit out of attack and transport helis in Operation Harsh Doorstop on my steam deck which is truly a joy to fly with. The helis are fairly realistic which means flying them like a maniac is addictive as hell .

I have also been playing a lot more pvp Beyond All Reason as I continue to get more comfortable with playing using onboard joysticks and gyro controls. The biggest problem I have is RTS players can't wrap their head around me not using a mouse (they aren't very imaginative I guess, I don't understand). This means that in situations my control scheme is less efficient than a mouse, players have ZERO patience with me but in the situations where joysticks + gyro is more efficient than mouse (certain types of micro, also placing buildings accurately but quickly) people either think I am a much higher level player trolling or that I am drunk or something because my cursor movements just don't look like a mouse is doing them.

sigh just gotta wait longer until stuffy pc gamers who think a mouse is the only way actually shut up and listen, not holding my breath..

https://flathub.org/apps/info.beyondallreason.bar

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

I've been replaying horizon zero dawn, however I've been struggling to keep going. I keep coming back to Celeste instead. I also just started sonic adventure 2.

Defenders quest 2 just released after 10 years of development! I've been having a very enjoyable time with that, the initial launch was rough on the deck but the first patch worked out the interface issues it was having.

Infinitode 2 (I guess I have a thing for tower defense games)

And some 'tiny rogue'

Also tried 'cat goes fishing', but a couple things are irking me about it, it's enjoyable enough and was cheap enough that I'm not upset.

Fired up 'prodeus' for the first time since activating it from a humble bundle (I think?) it has all the good feelings of the original doom, it's just a bit too stressful for me, especially at midnight when I tried playing it.

'boxes' is a kinda meh puzzle game, it's a bit high on its own farts, if it wants to be as deep and philosophical as I think it does, it needs to have much better puzzles, but if I ignore the story and don't think too much about the 'why not just break the glass' it's an enjoyable enough game.

I'm playing Medabots: Kabuto for GBA. It's a pretty fun although simple JRPG. It has a neat unit customization system, enjoyable story and great art/music.
Combat is unique in a way that can be a bit annoying (you only have a partial control on who to target) but it's something one can get used to and work around to some extent.

I also installed The Sims 2 (Ultimate Collection, not the Legacy one) but I didn't really spend much time playing it on the Deck (I usually default to my desktop playthrough). Based on a short test I did manage to do it seems to be working and controlling pretty well so that's promising at least.

Edit: I spent some time playing TS2 on the Deck. Beyond some short freezes when browsing through larger lists of content (clothing, furniture etc) the game runs really good, as expected. Unfortunately I don't find the controls on Deck to be comfortable enough to keep going - basic keyboard and mouse setup is the way for me with this one.

Mario Odyssey, Civ 6, Crash Bandicoot N'Sane Trilogy. and Ascent.

Having lots of fun with these games. Still amazes me how switch emulation is so smooth on the Deck.

I'm not sure I qualify as I play on mobile instead of Steam Deck, but Balatro is on both and it's too addicting not to mention. Currently 85% of the way to winning with all decks on the hardest difficulty and it just keeps getting more fun.

Nier Automata grinding for 100℅, Marvel Rivals rarely, 20 mins till dawn

I've been playing through Lost Judgement lately, and really enjoying it. I enjoy the Yakuza/LAD games in general, but I think Judgement/Lost Judgement really benefits from the gameplay additions for detective work. The game runs pretty well on Steam Deck too.

Also been playing through Doom Eternal again, which is always enjoyable. Playing with gyro aiming and flickstick for quick turning is a great way to play the game without a mouse.

Nothing currently. Tbh I'm a bit worried by how my deck has been collecting dust recently. I can't really figure out what I want from the device.

Prince of Persia: the Lost Crown

Morrowind (OpenMW) with Just good Morrowind it's been a long time since I've done a full playthrough.

i started showgunners a couple days ago, been trying to work on getting heroic launcher to work a bit more reliably and working through a bunch a games in my backlog from other stores.

pro tip, don’t forget your charger when you go hours away for xmas to visit family and leave it plugged in when you leave to come home and not have it for a month and a half

Downloaded the shin magami tensi 5 demo,

Have never played any of that series.

Read it was a bit like persona (could never get into it because I don't care about managing the day to day activities of a high schooler), was pretty happy to learn that it wasn't (at least as far as I've gotten), it reminds me of the game boy color game 'dragon warrior monsters'

I thought about buying it, but I have so many unplayed games already, and while I enjoy a good monster collector game, I couldn't justify pulling the trigger.

Also it was a bit too similar to persona, when it did go on that direction, for me to be confident it wouldn't jerk back in that direction.

Maybe when I have all the time in the world I'll put time and money into that game, for now it's a half completed demo on my deck.