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Ask HN: Recommendations for Steam Deck Games

6 points by royletron ↗ HN
I've been devouring so many good recommendations and now I am thirsty for more. So far I have obliterated:

- Hades - The Cult of The Lamb - Disco Elysium - Thimbleweed Park

But I trust people here have many good things to add to the list!

19 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 54.1 ms ] thread
flakyfilibuster
I'm scared to even mention it - considering it can be very addictive, but have you checked out Vampire Survivors?
royletron
Just downloaded after a mention somewhere else. Is this going to be like Factorio?
TingPing
As a game? They have nothing in common.
royletron
You recommended this one day ago and I've clocked 4.5 hours already...
midislack
Install Exult and play Ultima VII, the greatest RPG of all time!
royletron
Now this is a recommendation. Thanks
apineda
I'm a Rocket League addict myself. I heard Hollow Knight is good on it.
meras
All the games you mentioned are excellent! I find Hollow Knight and Celeste to be perfect handheld games.
mindcrash
RimWorld - which has been completely optimized for the Deck

https://store.steampowered.com/app/294100/RimWorld/

Factorio - Dev team is currently in process using the knowledge gained from the Switch port to create a fully Deck verified version

https://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/Factorio/

royletron
I'd love factorio to be deckified. I've had rimworld on the list for a while but never taken the plunge. What's the hook?
mindcrash
Rimworld is a very nice base building game, which gained a enormous amount of popularity from the get go due to the similarities to another quite popular game (Dwarf Fortress) and excellent game design (to make the game somewhat challenging every game you play is supervised by a AI director which more or less does the same thing as the one in L4D). The game as also expanded tremendously as of now due to three DLC packages which add a lot of fun gameplay:

- Nobility (Royalty)

- Belief systems (Ideology)

- Pregnancy, biotech and genetic modification (Biotech)

The game also has a pretty big modding community.

If you like sims you def are going to love it.

And if you happen to be interested in a deep dive into the game design principles behind Rimworld Tynan Sylvester (the designer/developer) wrote a entire book about it: https://tynansylvester.com/book/

solardev
Get Xbox Game Pass and play all the controller friendly games there

Most of the uplay subscription games also support controller

You can run most of the games either locally on the deck, streamed from your desktop, or streamed from the internet

flakyfilibuster
this is my dream - does it work without running windows though?
solardev
If you want to stream from the web using GeForce Now: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5337/~/h...

If you want to stream from your gaming PC, just start Steam on the gaming PC, login to the same account, and then your Steam Deck's "PLAY" buttons in the library should have drop-downs that let you select "STREAM" instead. It should work whether the host PC is running Windows or Linux or Mac, but of course you'll have a bigger library selection if the host is on Windows. (To be clear, the host PC can run any Windows game and stream it to Steam Deck running its default OS; no need to add Windows to the Steam Deck).

flakyfilibuster
ok, so there is no way to run XBox Gamepass games straight from the Deck (sans streaming) :(
solardev
Ahhh I see what you're asking now. Sorry, I misunderstood.

Yeah, I think you'd have to run Windows :( Even if the games were supported via Proton, I think (but I'm not sure) that Gamepass adds its own DRM layer.

If you do have a separate Windows machine though, streaming actually works very well... better than the Deck on its own... better graphics, way less heat/fan/battery life consumption (since the computer is doing all the hard work). I'd try if you haven't already.

fulafel
Xbox Live apparently has some kind of Stadia style cloud streaming, maybe this can work?
opyate
Platformers play really nicely on the deck, so check out Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, and its ilk.