Some games I’d rather play on PC for various reasons (immersion, control scheme, etc), but then some games felt just right to play on the Deck, Blasphemous, Pentiment, Citizen Sleeper…
I’m looking for more games like that, ideally 20-30 hours to complete, easy to pick up and put down, and good performance
UFO 50
1 - I grew up with the NES & now I have nostalgia for a game system that never existed.
2 - You literally get 50 games for the price of admission, so there’s sure to be something that clicks.
3 - I couldn’t imagine playing with a keyboard and mouse.
4 - Seriously, fifty games!
So many great suggestions added to my wishlist, thanks everybody!
I don’t have the choice of PC as I bought a Deck in lieu of upgrading, which is where all my gaming happens now. The game that properly sucked me in though was Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, it was a splendid experience on the Deck. At the moment however, I’ve been taken by Megabonk and Hollow Knight.
i can’t play hades (1 or 2) on anything other than the deck now. similar with dave the diver.
Death’s Door and Hades
Blake Manor
Awesome game… I gotta go back and continue playing
No Mans Sky. Plays great on the deck and flying with a controller feels better than keyboard and mouse.
Monster Hunter Rise. I used to lie in bed and play 4U for hours on 3DS, and now I’m doing it again with Rise and the Deck
Instead of a gaming computer, the last time I had some spare cash, I built a NAS. When I had a little again, but not enough to really build out a high end rig, I got the OLED Deck and immediately bought Factorio. I’d been binging Factorio content, recently found some channels like Dosh Doshington, DocJade, etc and knew I wanted in. For a PC game, that really wants a keyboard and mouse, it plays friggin fantastic on Deck.
More recently, because I was watching SMW romhack players a while back and Pangaea Panga just released Super Dram World 3, I’ve gone all in on learning Kaizo Mario games. Panga’s “Kaizo Kindergarten” is a great intro, along with “2Kaizo2Learn.” “Joy of Kaizo” is a beautiful dedication to Bob Ross’ “Joy of Painting” where level backgrounds are recreations of paintings from actual episodes of the show. It also features difficulty options and the beginner mode is pretty noob friendly. At least for someone like me who hasn’t played SMW since my SNES was hooked up in the 90s. Anyway, if you’ve fond memories of SMW it’s almost a crime not to revisit it and its hacks, either on a Deck or any portable emulator.
This is super interesting. To me Factorio feels so clumsy when you can’t access keyboard shortcuts. How did you get the controls to work well?
As Minnels pointed out, Wube put in work to make the game controller friendly for the Switch. On Deck, the trackpads make it even better. I play with the default settings but, like the OG Steam Controller, the controls are further customizable through Steam’s own interface. There are a few community layouts people seem fond of, which probably map some toggles or whatnot missing from the default layout, but I think it’s incredibly playable as is.
I’ve been on a hiatus from Factorio for about a month now but I’ve set up a dedicated server on the aforementioned NAS. I think I’m going to go another another bender soon and use it as an excuse to learn a little LUA and maybe Grafana as well. I think it’d be fun, once my build is semi-stable, to let it run unpaused even when players aren’t connected and have alerts set up based on the tracked stats. Will see how that pans out.
Sounds interesting. I wonder how that experience will balance with regards to establishing new mines… I could imagine that stable defenses can be set up against biters, but that resource patches will quickly run out if the game is left alone for 48+ hours
I think they made the controls controller friendly with the release of the switch version. Haven’t tried it myself but maybe should one day. Love Factorio.
Agree on Pentiment and Citizen Sleeper, I played them in bed before going to sleep. Another game I played the same way and loved was Heaven’s Vault. If you don’t have a problem with using the touchpads instead, Roadwarden is a good one too, text heavy but quite interesting IMHO.
I’ll take a look at both, thank you!!
Maybe scratch Road warden. I just remembered the text was too small for me on the Deck, I played it on the Legion Go. Sorry for the confusion.
But Heaven’s Vault is definitely worth a try.
Well, any 2D indie game with controller support is perfect for the deck: (Like the hollow Knight series, or Hades).
Got Hi-Fi Rush on sale. And the inputs feel much better than on my PC (I blame my Bluetooth controller).
Want something with a classic feel (other than emulators)? “Heretic + Hexen” (for some doom-like action) and the Soul Reaver remaster play really well (and I got that one on GoG).
I have more, but those are the ones I play exclusively on my deck, now.
Were Heretic and Hexen remastered? I’ll get them if so. Heretic was the first game I played multiplayer on a PC, before we even had Internet. My friend hosted a game across town and I dialed into his PC with a modem. Blew our parents’ minds.
Yes! They just shadow-dropped the remaster out of the blue. I got it for free since I owned the old versions of both games on steam.
I just need to convince my friends to play with me xD
Brotato…so much Brotato…
BallisticNG
I might cheat a bit here, but for me its emulation with RetroArch since launch! I love the additional trackpads that give me features not possible on a regular gamepad. I setup my own menus and functionality. Can’t wait for the official Steam Controller (2) to launch, so I can use this on my PC too.
I can recommend Balatro!
Roguelites have all been great on the Deck. Brotato, Enter the Gungeon, Hades 2, etc etc.
No please I can’t afford a new rehab
I second (third?) this. On the desktop it felt kinda boring. But it’s amazing for a quick pick up and play session on the Deck. Can’t recommend it enough. :)
I think it may even be better on the phone.
Caves of Qud
Doesn’t seem like a controller friendly game at first glance, but it’s so well optimized that I cannot go back to PC with it.
I also get like 4 hours of battery life out of it, which I use up regularly.
Bring the TDP down to 6W and you’ll get at least 6.5 with no impact on gameplay
After playing CoQ with controller support I find similar games unplayably uncomfortable. It’s done so well that it’s shocking to look back at how the UI used to be and remember the game wasn’t designed from the ground up with controller in mind.
Have bought that game a while ago but never came around to play it so far. Hope I get a bit of time to spend delving into Qud during holidays.
Doesn’t seem like a controller friendly game at first glance, but it’s so well optimized that I cannot go back to PC with it.
Why don’t you use a controller on PC?
Ive been waiting for a good sale to get it, can’t wait to dive into it
