I'll again recommend Tainted Grail. It's a twisted Arthurian Legends based 3D turn based strategy roguelike RPG in the deck building genre. Like Slay the Spire but 3D. Dark and twisted stories and characters. Plays well on the Deck.
Also, another thing to keep in mind is that "Unsupported" doesn't necessarily mean a game won't work on the Deck. Sometimes the latest, experimental version of Proton will work. Other times, using compatibility tools other than Steam's official Proton releases, e.g. GE-Proton, can often times get things going. You might need to tinker and consult google/reddit/protondb.
Roguelikes are also great on the Steam Deck. The shorter play sessions and sleep functionality is perfect. Someone already mentioned Balatro, but you could also try Dead Cells, Binding of Isaac, Noita, Revita, Spelunky, Slay the Spire, Dicey Dungeons, or Risk of Rain.
Yep already have most of those. Looking forward to it. I'm spoiled by Amazon Prime... ordered Sunday, its now Wednesday night and a tracking number finally showed up (though still not recognized by UPS). My case and SD card showed up yesterday 
... Heroes of Hammerwatch ...
I wish I would have seen the sale for this. I checked it out last night after reading your post and it looked decent. My buddy and I download the demo for HoH II and played for a couple hours. It was enjoyable.
I've wishlisted the first, now, hoping it goes on sale again.
Thanks for the reco.
-BEP
pandasuit wrote:... Heroes of Hammerwatch ...
I wish I would have seen the sale for this. I checked it out last night after reading your post and it looked decent. My buddy and I download the demo for HoH II and played for a couple hours. It was enjoyable.
I've wishlisted the first, now, hoping it goes on sale again.
Thanks for the reco.
-BEP
I haven’t tried Hammerwatch 2 yet but the original one was fun. Pretty sure I got it for deep sale or as part of a bundle a long time ago. They seem to go on sale regularly. Steam winter sale should be soon so maybe you don’t have to wait long.
I’ve only played a bit of Heroes of Hammerwatch so far but I enjoyed it enough that I lost track of time and stayed up later than usual playing because I didn’t want to stop.
It has a bit of the same feel as Children of Morta so far and I loved that game. So far it has less charm than Morta but maybe that changes as I get more into it. If you haven’t tried Morta yet and are into this type of game I highly suggest that one. I played it coop with my son and we loved it.
With the team support abilities in Heroes of Hammerwatch I suspect it would be even better when played with friends. Maybe I’ll grab a copy for my son if it goes on sale again soon.
Edit:
Apparently Hammerwatch 2 has some serious bugs and the devs are not able to patch it due to their old publisher. Maybe avoid that one for now.
But I see a new Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 is coming soon published directly by the devs. There is a demo available so I’ll give that a try soon.
I bought Morta on a whim, I think because Cory kept mentioning it back when I listened to the podcast. Kit and I really enjoyed it, but still have far to go it in. I'll make it a priority for us to play again over the break. Thanks for reminding me of it.
HoH II does have that vibe where you just want to keep playing. The mechanic where your max health drops when someone gets revived really makes you want to play safer. Does HoH have that, too?
-BEP
HoH II does have that vibe where you just want to keep playing. The mechanic where your max health drops when someone gets revived really makes you want to play safer. Does HoH have that, too?
-BEP
I've only played it solo so far so I'm not sure how it handles things like that
Just a reminder for people who are getting Decks, the free libraries you can collect on other stores can be ran on the deck. Variety of tools are getting better all the time. Heroic Launcher is one, but there are several other options getting better all the time for Epic, GOG, Amazon, and EA (although this one is the most painful).
Just saw Dredge is free on Amazon Prime Gaming via GOG. So I picked it up today and will try it on the Deck. I've seen it recommended several times as a good Deck option.
Just a reminder for people who are getting Decks, the free libraries you can collect on other stores can be ran on the deck. Variety of tools are getting better all the time. Heroic Launcher is one, but there are several other options getting better all the time for Epic, GOG, Amazon, and EA (although this one is the most painful).
Just saw Dredge is free on Amazon Prime Gaming via GOG. So I picked it up today and will try it on the Deck. I've seen it recommended several times as a good Deck option.
Good reminder.
I also play alternate store and streamed games on my Deck.
Heroic has been great for Epic store games but I stopped using Heroic for GoG and now run Galaxy through Lutris. That way I get cloud saves and syncing with my other devices. Heroic support for GoG cloud saves is not good enough yet. Lutris also gets me Amazon games. I’ve been meaning to try it for Blizzard and others but haven’t yet.
GOG saves work for me on heroic, though it can be a bit of a PITA and heroic works for amazon now.
GOG saves work for me on heroic, though it can be a bit of a PITA and heroic works for amazon now.
Are GoG achievements working via Heroic? I haven't poked at it in awhile (I just boot to Windows on my SD card for GoG games since I run them via Galaxy.)
I don't think achievements work, but I honestly don't know for sure.
Don't you find you lose a lot of performance and battery life using a windows install?
Windows isn't a great experience on the Deck, but it's just more straightforward for things like Game Pass or wanting to play with achievements enabled via GoG Galaxy.
I actually like the Galaxy client and would absolutely use a Linux version, but CDPR has seemingly been uninterested in that for like a decade even though it's like 4 out of the top 5 wishlist requests for many, many, many years running.
In terms of battery life... maybe? It's not that a difference of 10-20% (I've never actually measured it, just guessing here) doesn't matter at all. But if I'm playing a game I'll realistically get 2 hours of battery life from in Windows, getting an extra 10-20 minutes if I played via Steam OS isn't enough to offset the annoyance of trying to get Game Pass or Galaxy working under Steam OS.
Performance I wouldn't say I've noticed a huge difference. Like I've played quite a bit of Cyberpunk in potato mode via Windows. Maybe if a game was perfectly barely hitting 30fps in Steam OS, and you found switching to Windows you were getting 25fps, then that'd matter. In my personal use I can't name a specific edge case like that, though.
I don't think the average person will notice a huge performance or battery life difference. Steam OS being drastically more of a pleasant experience on a handheld is the selling point more than either of those for me.
If I own a game on Steam, I play it via Steam OS. If it's a Game Pass game or something I want to track GoG achievements with, it's just simpler to use Windows.
That's why I would be curious once Heroic has GoG achievements working. It'd be one less reason to boot into Windows, although I'd still do that for Game Pass stuff.
Windows isn't a great experience on the Deck, but it's just more straightforward for things like Game Pass or wanting to play with achievements enabled via GoG Galaxy.
I actually like the Galaxy client and would absolutely use a Linux version, but CDPR has seemingly been uninterested in that for like a decade even though it's like 4 out of the top 5 wishlist requests for many, many, many years running.
In terms of battery life... maybe? It's not that a difference of 10-20% (I've never actually measured it, just guessing here) doesn't matter at all. But if I'm playing a game I'll realistically get 2 hours of battery life from in Windows, getting an extra 10-20 minutes if I played via Steam OS isn't enough to offset the annoyance of trying to get Game Pass or Galaxy working under Steam OS.
Performance I wouldn't say I've noticed a huge difference. Like I've played quite a bit of Cyberpunk in potato mode via Windows. Maybe if a game was perfectly barely hitting 30fps in Steam OS, and you found switching to Windows you were getting 25fps, then that'd matter. In my personal use I can't name a specific edge case like that, though.
I don't think the average person will notice a huge performance or battery life difference. Steam OS being drastically more of a pleasant experience on a handheld is the selling point more than either of those for me.
If I own a game on Steam, I play it via Steam OS. If it's a Game Pass game or something I want to track GoG achievements with, it's just simpler to use Windows.
That's why I would be curious once Heroic has GoG achievements working. It'd be one less reason to boot into Windows, although I'd still do that for Game Pass stuff.
If you do want the full GoG Galaxy in SteamOS you can easily install it through Lutris and you'll have every feature working. That's how I play GoG games on my Deck these days.
Instructions here:
https://lutris.net/games/gog-galaxy/
For me the main reason I moved away from using Heroic was the lack of cloud saves for many games. I'm regularly playing the same game on Deck and my desktop and I always want to be able to continue my save on both.
Lack of Game Pass PC support on SteamOS is the main reason I keep getting tempted to boot Windows off a SD card like you are. Main reason I haven't yet is I have no lack of other games to play on Deck for now.
Yep already have most of those. Looking forward to it. I'm spoiled by Amazon Prime... ordered Sunday, its now Wednesday night and a tracking number finally showed up (though still not recognized by UPS). My case and SD card showed up yesterday :)
The current Jingle Jam contains a bunch of games that play great on Deck:
https://jinglejam.tiltify.com/
Conveniently they are all Steam keys.
So far Wildfrost is my favorite from those.
If you do want the full GoG Galaxy in SteamOS you can easily install it through Lutris and you'll have every feature working. That's how I play GoG games on my Deck these days.
Instructions here:
https://lutris.net/games/gog-galaxy/For me the main reason I moved away from using Heroic was the lack of cloud saves for many games. I'm regularly playing the same game on Deck and my desktop and I always want to be able to continue my save on both.
Lack of Game Pass PC support on SteamOS is the main reason I keep getting tempted to boot Windows off a SD card like you are. Main reason I haven't yet is I have no lack of other games to play on Deck for now.
I've used Lutris for Galaxy before but it's clunky. Dealing with the Galaxy offline installer and manually updating everything is a bit of a pain, as is installing Galaxy to a bottle. So then you're faced with, install all games to the same bottle, which means mucking about with those settings if you ever need to tweak something for a specific game. Or install the Galaxy client over and over into different bottles. And that's not considering games that don't seem to work via Lutris Galaxy for some reason.
Something like Heroic that's more streamlined, I'd be tempted. But I'd rather just boot to Windows than faff around with that.
Carlbear95 wrote:Yep already have most of those. Looking forward to it. I'm spoiled by Amazon Prime... ordered Sunday, its now Wednesday night and a tracking number finally showed up (though still not recognized by UPS). My case and SD card showed up yesterday :)
The current Jingle Jam contains a bunch of games that play great on Deck:
https://jinglejam.tiltify.com/Conveniently they are all Steam keys.
So far Wildfrost is my favorite from those.
Some good stuff in there, thanks for the heads up!
I don't own XR glasses but they've always seemed like a useful accessory for the Steam Deck.
I do have a Quest 2 and while it isn't portable like XR glasses it is portable enough to use in any room of my house.
Recently I've been streaming a lot of games from my Steam Deck to the Quest 2 using Steam Link app's 2D game streaming mode which gives me a large virtual display for the Steam Deck. It works quite well. I'm expanding the virtual display so it's roughly the size of the wall in whatever room I'm in.
I'm using the Deck's controls directly. I could use peripherals but the Deck is already a very good input device and it's easier to use this setup in different rooms if I'm not hauling around anything except the headset and the Deck.
It's streaming over wireless but for the most part that hasn't been an issue. I started to get lag when I tried using the YouTube app at the same time as Steam Link but I suspect that had more to do with the Quest 2's hardware performance than the wireless connection.
The type of games I play on the Deck seem to translate pretty well to the Quest 2 display which can't show incredible detail anyways. Anything with small letters on a bright background goes poorly tho.
I'm using hand tracking so that I can launch Steam Link and resize the window without having to have the Quest controllers with me. Steam Link supports hand tracking pass through for VR and when using 2D mode you can use your hands like a mouse. Not good enough for most games but it worked great for Nodebuster where all I have to do is wave my hands around and occasionally click in menus.
This has got me thinking about upgrading to a Quest 3 for more screen clarity and better passthrough so I can be more present and interact with things outside the headset without having to take it off. Just finger tap to hide the open apps and then I have nothing blocking my passthrough vision. I'm currently debating whether that's enough to justify spending here instead of on other things I want.
I'm currently debating whether that's enough to justify spending here instead of on other things I want.
The struggle!
I've talked myself out of a GPU over Black Friday, a new TV (mine is only 3 years old), and a new monitor (one of my dual monitors has dimmed a lot, but... I can just swap them so the bright one is primary.)
I did get a 2TB SSD for the Deck though.
Spam, reported ^
Looks like I misremembered, you were right, no save sync for gog in heroic. Sorry for the misinform.
Looks like I misremembered, you were right, no save sync for gog in heroic. Sorry for the misinform.
Yes there is. I've been using it on Dredge that I got from Amazon Prime Gaming.
It's still beta and buried in the settings.
Tycho the Mad wrote:Looks like I misremembered, you were right, no save sync for gog in heroic. Sorry for the misinform.
Yes there is. I've been using it on Dredge that I got from Amazon Prime Gaming.
It's still beta and buried in the settings.
Yeah it’s there but it never really worked well for me which is why I use Galaxy through Lutris. Definitely willing to try again tho as I like Heroic and it’s less of a hassle than my setup.
When a game does have sync support in heroic, I find the way to make it work is to set it to force download/upload as appropriate.
PSA: There is now a dedicated thread for general discussion of handheld gaming systems.
I'm sure the next Steam Deck will warrant it's own thread when it launches, but until then we can discuss, speculate, argue, etc in the catch-all thread.
So despite it not being verified I'm having a great time running Starfield on low settings.
Verified is such a hit or miss metric unfortunately. I prefer ProtonDB which tends to have much better ratings and posts for fixes.
I tip I just learnt if you are playing games that have console commands.
Go to the controller layout in the steam menu. Assign R4 as keyboard shift and L4 as the ~ key and away you go.
I tip I just learnt if you are playing games that have console commands.
Go to the controller layout in the steam menu. Assign R4 as keyboard shift and L4 as the ~ key and away you go.
I think that there’s a way to assign the chord Shift-~ to one button. I don’t have my deck handy so I can’t tell you how but I’m pretty sure it’s possible.
strangederby wrote:I tip I just learnt if you are playing games that have console commands.
Go to the controller layout in the steam menu. Assign R4 as keyboard shift and L4 as the ~ key and away you go.
I think that there’s a way to assign the chord Shift-~ to one button. I don’t have my deck handy so I can’t tell you how but I’m pretty sure it’s possible.
Neat.
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