26 video games we love on Steam Deck

Because it launched in 2022, the Steam Deck has shortly amassed a popularity as among the finest, if not the greatest, handheld gaming platforms in the marketplace at the moment— particularly when contemplating the advantages of the OLED model.

With a library of video games spanning a lot of Steam’s huge storefront, a docking station to play video games on TV and screens, and an growing variety of titles being optimized and verified for the Deck every single day, Valve’s proprietary handheld is an ideal instance of the viability and promise of transportable PC gaming. That’s why we’ve collected 26 titles that showcase what makes the Steam Deck so particular.

To curate the listing, we’ve choose video games that profit essentially the most from the Steam Deck’s particular options. One can find PC exclusives, Swap video games that profit right here from sooner load occasions, and video games that break aside properly into brief classes.

Don’t count on to see some presumed contenders on the listing. Not each recreation is appropriate with the Steam Deck, neither is each style an ideal match — we’re you, RTS video games. And for now, this listing additionally excludes emulation and cloud streaming.

We deliberately restrict our lists to keep away from overwhelming readers, so make sure to share your private picks that didn’t make the reduce within the feedback.

Our newest replace added Fields of Mistria, A Little to the Left, One Btn Bosses.

From developer NPC Studio, Fields of Mistria is an early entry farming and life simulation recreation that already works fantastically on Valve’s SteamDeck. Fields of Mistria is a type of video games that’s straightforward to fall into – a comfortable recreation, if you’ll. Although it’s a PC recreation, it feels prefer it’s meant for the hand-held gamer. There’s nothing extra I’d love to do than curl up and play by just a few day-night cycles in Fields of Mistria earlier than mattress. —Nicole Carpenter

A Little to the Left, launched in 2022, is a puzzle that’s centered round group and sorting — sample recognizing is an important talent for the sport. It’s damaged up right into a bunch of little ranges, greater than 100 of them, all of that are bite-sized bits of gameplay excellent to choose up everytime you’ve obtained the possibility. That makes it an important recreation for the SteamDeck: It’s a superb recreation to play throughout commutes, or whenever you would possibly in any other case be distracted often. And like Fields of Mistria, it’s a type of video games which are made all of the extra higher when enjoying from mattress or a comfortable chair. —N. Carpenter

One Btn Bosses makes use of only one button to play, and also you’re in luck — that one button is pushable on the SteamDeck. The straightforward premise is performed out in small, minutes-long classes that put you in on-rails bullet hell insanity. Like Vampire Survivors, the sport does the capturing for you; you management motion, dodging assaults despatched proper again at you whereas auto-firing. Simply because there’s just one button doesn’t imply it’s straightforward, although. It takes actual technique and talent when you’ve reached the upper ranges of One Btn Bosses. —N. Carpenter

For not less than just a few of the video games on this listing — like, say, Elden Ring — you’re going to mess with the sport’s settings on Steam Deck in an effort to ensure you’ve obtained an honest body charge and the sport feels good to play. Not a priority in any respect for Animal Effectively, a pixel-art masterpiece that feels prefer it may’ve been at house on the Recreation Boy. With a file measurement of simply 33 MB, it certain gained’t take lengthy to put in, both. However Animal Effectively packs fairly a little bit of thriller and time-intensive puzzle-solving into its very small package deal. What begins off as a compelling Metroidvania quickly spirals into an in depth Easter egg hunt with gadgets hidden behind delightfully esoteric clues. It’s possible you’ll as effectively play it on the go, because it’s going to take over your mind for some time and also you’re carrying that round with you already. —Maddy Myers

Final weekend, on a whim, I booted up Hyper Gentle Drifter on my Steam Deck for the primary time since enjoying it again in 2016. 9 hours later, I lastly managed to wrest myself from the siren-like name of its pixelated tableaus, blistering fight, and melancholic rating, having accomplished it once more and earned the sport’s secret ending. Such is the magnetic attraction and energy of Coronary heart Machine’s debut even eight years after its launch.

Recreation director Alx Preston and co. got down to create a 16-bit action-RPG that channeled the perfect parts of the Legend of Zelda and Diablo collection, with a narrative not a lot instructed as it’s felt by its dialogue-less cutscenes that play out as in the event that they have been fugue-like visions of some doomed alternate universe. Hyper Gentle Drifter achieved all of that and extra, coalescing into an action-RPG that stands the take a look at of time. —Toussaint Egan

The Yakuza collection spans lots of of hours throughout seven mainline entries, together with a handful of spinoffs. Which is to say, the transportable Steam Deck gives the most effective likelihood at seeing everything of this Japanese gangster epic, particularly within the type of brief missions on lunch breaks. If you happen to don’t have time for each recreation, or simply want a spot to begin, we suggest Yakuza 0. A kind of prequel to the collection, the journey takes place in Eighties Japan and gives numerous colourful backstories. Don’t be fooled by the entire violent fight and seedy locales; this collection (and particularly this entry) has extra coronary heart and pleasure than 99% of video games from big-budget publishers. Hero Kazuma Kiryu desires to make the world a greater place, one metropolis block at a time. —Chris Plante

Deep breath: Cult of the Lamb is Animal Crossing meets Hades meets the darkish aspect of Catholic historical past meets Glad Tree Pals meets American cultism meets European occultism meets Darkish Souls meets Eighties Satanic Panic meets Fractured Fairy Tales meets the waking desires of Peter Molyneux.

Cult of the Lamb is sort of a stew. If you happen to look intently, you possibly can spot all of those scrumptious particular person components, however when slurped from a giant spoon all you’ll style is one distinct taste. —CP

There are few cell gaming experiences as serene and enthralling as Dave the Diver. Dave dives not simply to gather fish and cooking supplies for the sushi restaurant he staffs each night time, however to uncover historical secrets and techniques. No matter your goal, navigating the deep looks like a mix between Animal Crossing and a roguelike, the place you’re amassing higher instruments to uncover what (and who) is lurking within the depths.

Dave the Diver is a family-friendly recreation (when you can look previous small clouds of blood whenever you harpoon a fish) that’s startlingly good at mixing many recreation genres in a single. You swim; handle a restaurant; farm fish, veggies and extra; and are solely answerable for reversing a local weather change-inducing menace beneath the ocean. And on the Steam Deck, it’s a lot simpler to slot in only one extra dive session. —Cameron Faulkner

You may not count on Dredge to really feel at house on the Steam Deck at first look, nevertheless it completely does. This haunted seafaring journey exams the protagonist’s psyche, and the gameplay loop is ideal for fast pick-up, put-down classes. To not point out, it’s a number of enjoyable being let out to fish, clear up mysteries, and full goals earlier than the solar goes down. And when you dare, dredge the depths after darkish for some spooky surprises. —CF

Half coming-of-age visible novel, half exploration-heavy sci-fi RPG, half poker-esque card recreation, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a brilliantly charming recreation that you just’ll wish to play many times (and once more). You tackle the position of a younger child in Earth’s first planetary colony, and observe their life on a wierd new alien planet over the course of 10 years. Each exercise you choose impacts your private journey and the relationships you make — and likewise performs an enormous position in the way forward for the planet.

What actually makes I Was a Teenage Exocolonist so compelling is the replayability — ending a playthrough offers you information that you just take by to the following, permitting you to make totally different (and probably higher!) choices. For example, there’s a personality who dies very early on within the first playthrough that may’t be saved in any respect. Their demise haunts that first run.

However in the second, it can save you them as a result of you may have a hunch as to how issues will go. It’s a recreation that invitations you to play by one other spherical and one other and one other — simply to see if you may get it all proper this time (or make issues go horribly mistaken! Or crack the key as to why you’re dwelling these lives time and again!). —Petrana Radulovic

My love for the Star Fox collection has evaporated with every new entry, to the purpose that I started to marvel if I ever actually loved these video games or if I simply appreciated chunky ’90s 3D graphics. Ex-Zodiac’s creators have performed what Nintendo couldn’t for the previous couple of many years: bottle the unique magic of the area flight franchise and add simply sufficient tweaks to make the journey palatable for our collective developed tastes. (Hey, video video games have come a good distance for the reason that SNES!) Developer MNKY additionally created bonus ranges impressed by different retro classics, like House Harrier, emphasizing its knack for refueling as soon as thrilling genres which have spent means too lengthy accumulating mud within the storage. —CP

Stray is a recreation about being a cat. You don’t speak like Garfield or wink on the digital camera like Bubsy. You stretch, scratch, and sometimes leap between ledges at perilous heights. Your cat participates in a harrowing journey set in a dystopian, cyberpunk underworld through which robots echo the lives of their long-dead human counterparts. However most engagement occurs in your behalf by an lovable, English-speaking, artificially clever drone named B-12. The sport’s creators maintain your cat’s direct involvement ambiguous. Is the cat the savior of a dying planet? Or is the cat only a cat who occurs to be the incidental shepherd of historic change? Like I stated, typical cat stuff. —CP

There’s a cause Stardew Valley continues to be so beloved after eight years: It’s simply rattling good. The newest huge replace provides a lot to the already sturdy recreation, fleshing out Pelican City and its inhabitants. It’s not simply farming, however mining, fishing, foraging, and attending to know all of the townspeople (and probably marrying them). Rebuild your little group and get actually invested in perfecting your farm’s format! Or journey to the deepest, darkest ranges of the mines. Or simply spend a lot of time fishing.

There’s simply so a lot to do in Stardew Valley. It’s clear to see why this recreation revitalized the farming sim style and why each farming sim today desires to be similar to it (with a twist). —PR

I’m happy with the work we do at gamerlifemedia, however each publication has its weaknesses. I’ve accepted that we’re not the go-to specialists for old-school side-scrolling shooters and shmups. That honor goes to our friends at Eurogamer, particularly Martin Robinson, who I belief extra with this style than I do any pundit with American politics. When he proclaimed Drainus is “essentially the most spectacular side-scrolling shooter since Gradius 5,” I needed to give it a strive. Is it the most effective? I stated I’m not an professional. However I can say, with confidence, it’s been a blast on Steam Deck, a scrumptious digestif after hours in a contemporary open-world recreation, and an unusually accommodating entry level for a notoriously impenetrable style. —CP

Probably the greatest video games of all time acquired among the finest remakes of all time, and now you possibly can play its most full model at any time when and wherever you need. I imply, I may write extra causes you need to play this recreation, however let’s be actual — both you may have performed a model of Remaining Fantasy 7 already otherwise you’ve been instructed numerous occasions to bump this one up your queue. Throw this suggestion on the pile. —CP

Meet the Steam Deck’s killer app. It’s not excellent — I play on low settings and sometimes expertise body charge dips — however Elden Ring works, and that’s all I have to farm souls (er, “runes”) in FromSoftware’s open-world enlargement of its Darkish Souls system. That is the sport that has saved me awake previous midnight. I promise myself that I’ll cease as soon as I see what’s on the finish of a moss-lined cave or over a burning horizon, however then I see some new curiosity, and immediately, I’m pummeling my means by one other dungeon. The comfort of a conveyable system turns what I meant to be a 15-minute grind session right into a two-hour journey by a labyrinthine dungeon. —CP

So that you’ve dropped half a grand on a conveyable online game machine able to powering essentially the most complicated and costly 3D video video games on the planet. Now put together to burn dozens of hours on a $2.99 2D dungeon crawler that just about performs itself. Vampire Survivors is the unholy union of clickers, roguelikes, and Gauntlet. Runs take 10-Half-hour and pair effectively with an audiobook or podcast. The builders have found the system for an ideal transportable recreation, however in the intervening time, you possibly can’t discover this one on Swap or smartphones. —CP

Jusant has been my go-to chill-out recreation of alternative this 12 months, and I can’t think about enjoying it on something apart from the Steam Deck. The post-apocalyptic fantasy climbing recreation from French developer Don’t Nod (Life Is Unusual) has quite a bit going for it: a mysterious and compelling world with lovely artwork design, a transferring orchestral music rating, and tight controls which are straightforward to study and gratifying to grasp.

It’s that final level that makes the Steam Deck my most popular platform of option to play Jusant. The satisfying sound and haptic suggestions of the Deck’s left and proper triggers makes the problem of climbing the cliff faces of the sport’s impossibly huge and looming tower as painless and pleasing as doable, and the visible and sound high quality of the Deck is terrific at rendering the beautiful vistas and ambient soundscapes of the world. If you happen to’re on the lookout for a calming but thrilling journey recreation expertise that performs nice on the Steam Deck, that is the one to play. —TE

The most effective place to play Dragon Quest 11 has modified over time. The JRPG to finish all JRPGs first launched in 2018 on Steam and PlayStation 4, solely to be bested a 12 months later by a Definitive Version for Nintendo Swap, which included further content material and may very well be performed on the go. The Definitive Version then got here to Steam in 2020, however, after all, it lacked the portability of the Swap model, forcing gamers to decide on between visuals and comfort. With the Steam Deck, people can now have it each methods. —CP

My blurb for gamerlifemedia’s greatest video games of the 2010s applies to why Nier: Automata belongs on each Steam Deck:

Nier: Automata is the sport I most frequently discover myself desirous to play as an alternative of the numerous fine-but-forgettable shooters and open-world distractions that land on my desk. I give it some thought each week partly as a result of its soundtrack is my favourite writing music, partly as a result of its toys litter my desk, and principally as a result of it’s simply that good. Sure, you need to beat it 5 occasions, however in hindsight, I want I had a cause to play it one other 5 hundred. —CP

Whereas Paranormasight is accessible for Swap and iOS, it seems and performs greatest (and is commonly essentially the most inexpensive) on Steam Deck, whether or not you’re utilizing it in handheld mode or if it’s docked to your TV. This spooky, reasonably mature episodic visible novel is hard to place down, particularly whenever you start to uncover the way it progresses.

You assume the position of a number of characters, who’re all making an attempt to outlive a supernatural cataclysm that’s out for everybody’s soul. The story is instructed to make you care about every certainly one of them, not realizing who’s about to chunk the mud on the subsequent flip of occasions. —CF

In 2009, Volition created an open-world terrorism simulator set on Mars. With a hammer and construction-grade explosives, a bald area bro destroys landmarks, authorities workplace complexes, and mining services piece by piece. The place its open-world friends centered on realism and narrative, Purple Faction emphasised chaotic enjoyable. Writer THQ deliberate to transform Purple Faction right into a “transmedia” property, however little materialized past a mediocre sequel and a made-for-TV film. The closest we’ve seen to a non secular sequel is 2020’s Teardown, an indie heist recreation that invitations gamers to bust by buildings made from chunky voxels. Talking of, I ought to set up Teardown on my Steam Deck. —CP

9 Hours, 9 Individuals, 9 Doorways and Zero Escape: Advantage’s Final Reward have been two of essentially the most beloved visible novels on the Nintendo DS, 3DS, and PlayStation Vita. Sadly, Nintendo and Sony not assist the DS and Vita on-line outlets, and the 3DS on-line storefront will shut in 2023. In the meantime, The Nonary Video games, which bundles the 2 titles, stays simply as obtainable at the moment because it did when it launched on Steam in 2017, with no menace of disappearing anytime quickly. —CP

Spelunky HD saved my PlayStation Vita inside arm’s attain lengthy after Sony gave up on the cult handheld. Final 12 months, developer Mossmouth ported Spelunky and its sequel to the Nintendo Swap — and I lastly moved my Vita into its long-term house in my storage bin of gaming artifacts. I gained’t say the Steam Deck is a greater house for Spelunky than the Swap, simply that it’s one other transportable house. And any transportable that may play Spelunky ought to play Spelunky. —CP

Wildermyth made gamerlifemedia’s high 10 video games of 2021 listing by reimagining the D&D expertise with out the necessity for a part-time Dungeon Grasp. The fight is intelligent sufficient (your magic can convert any object right into a lethal weapon), however I particularly cherish its creator’s dedication to characters. Social gathering members discover lovers and nemeses, they purchase weapons and battle scars, they age and ultimately die. Quests are damaged into 10- to 15-minute episodes of story and fight, ideally suited for filling any gaps in your day. The controls on Steam Deck do take just a little follow, however the recreation has benefited from an lively group of modders and storytellers, so I wouldn’t be stunned if we see improved user-made management settings quickly. —CP

In 2004, Half-Life 2 helped launch Steam, attracting 1000’s of gamers to Valve’s then-unproven online game ecosystem. In return for becoming a member of Steam, gamers may obtain a first-person shooter that was far forward of its time. Right this moment, Half-Life 2 (and its pair of supplemental episodes) works as one other instance of Valve’s magic. I put in a PC recreation I purchased almost 20 years in the past onto a conveyable laptop, and it solely took a couple of minutes to enter the streets of Metropolis 17. —CP

What if Hideo Kojima made his magnum opus, however most individuals wrote it off as a tedious strolling simulator? Reader, it occurred! Demise Stranding is my private recreation of the last decade, an astounding mishmash of all the things to seem in a Kojima recreation: earnest critiques of capitalism and the ache factors of democracy, eerie premonitions of world pandemics and a gig economic system compelled to hold society on its shoulders, and sufficient mommy points to justify a lifetime of remedy. Plus, the sport itself is enjoyable. Like, very enjoyable!

No, you don’t get to shoot a lot stuff, nor do you conquer the large open-world map. However you do make the world just a little extra manageable for you and different gamers, slowly constructing bridges, roads, and ladders that may inevitably be destroyed by nature. The place different video games ask you to develop into the ruler of their world, Demise Stranding reminds you that we’re all merely vacationers awaiting our one-way flight off of this rock. Did I point out the poop grenades?

Loads of people didn’t give the sport a shot on PlayStation 4 or PC. Possibly the Steam Deck will make the sport handy sufficient to win over a handful of curious individuals to make the leap into Demise Stranding’s sticky, inky depths. —CP