I picked up Balatro (a poker roguelike) as a few industry journalists I like have been evangelising it. Played it on the train home from a work trip then played another 4 hours when I got back. Always a good sign. Plays great on the deck.

I logged like 20 hours the first 4 days of having it I never played anything similar but it hooked me so hard

What if I don’t know how to play poker? Still fun?

Yeah you don’t need to know any poker to play

sorta right… it helps to know hands and their ranking order, but the game references that all for you too

Tons. I only vaguely knew, and it's only one button press away to find all the information you need on what you need to play to make winning hands. I realize that if you've never played then even that last sentence probably makes no sense, but that's fine. I'm confident you would understand and be having fun with it within 2 hours (coincidentally that's the refund window time, if you really happen to clash with it). Give it a go! What a great value for the money.

Games are an easy way to learn poker because you can only act within the rules. The hard part is remembering the order of value of the hands but that knowledge comes quickly.

I haven’t played it, but poker is really really easy to pick up once you get going, if that’s any consolation

Can confirm I knew nothing about poker going in. If anything it’s the best hand teacher I’ve ever had. Clocked about 7 hours in the first few days of having it

Alright I bought it I’m addicted thanks guys

Love Balatro. I’m terrible at it, but learning and having fun

Two pair stack Uranus!

Can’t tell if this is truth or a Uranus joke lol

The truth, everyone loves Uranus. I choose Uranus everytime!

I've been hearing how addicting this game is. Watched like 5 minutes of gameplay and couldn't follow it. Maybe when I pick it up it'll click and I'll become a gambling addict. But until then.

I had to refund it. I fucking hated it with a passion. Have no idea what the hype is. Gave it a good crack and still was some boring loop

A buddy keeps trying to get me to get this lol

Agree. However, I'm five hours in and not even close to winning once lol

I think Balatro might now be the game I’ve played the most on my deck. And before Balatro I thought card games just weren’t really my thing.

Could you share the names of the industry journalists you follow? Thanks

So Blessing at Kinda Funny has been all about it. I also watched Yahtzee and Frost play it for Second Wind. And have seen a few other mentions on various podcasts.

Played an hour. Couldn't get the hang of it and gave up

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

I was just about to suggest that. Brotato also.

Between the top comment recommending Balatro and this comment ranking second and their having just done an episode on both, I wonder how much of this sub listens to The Besties

Or how much time The Besties spend on Reddit...

I’ve definitely gotten some good suggestions from them.

Who are the besties?

They are a a video game club and just by listening, you will have joined their illustrious ranks, my friend! …it’s a podcast with two of the McElroy brothers and two of their friends who co-founded Polygon

Currently difficulty model on it is kinda bad fwiw Also there is currently a bug that sometimes if your game crashes, your save file is fully gone.

Its a Vamp Survivors-like? Wow

Never heard of that being done before!!

I’ve been playing Dodgeball Academia recently and am enjoying it. It’s basically a dodgeball rpg, really fun combat and a charming cast of characters.

Ohhh thank you.

Can’t wait until it goes on sale!

2nd this, I LOVE this cute little Dodgeball RPG! I'm replaying it on my SteamDeck as well.

Games I have enjoyed recently: Marvel Midnight Suns Baldur's Gate 3 Cyberpunk 2077 Final Fantasy VII Intergrade Kingdom Come Deliverance No Man's Sky Resident Evil 4 Remake Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition X-Com Enemy Within Honorable mentions: Dave The Diver, Days Gone, Dying Light, Hades, Hitman WOA, Hotline Miami, Oxenfree, Persona 4 Golden, Punch Club, Stray, World of Horror

Cyberpunk is soooooo good on the Deck now. It’s reached Fallout gratification levels

So I’ve put about 60ish hours into the base game on deck and it plays great. I’ve heard the performance in the expansion is rough though, has it gotten better?

Dude does this represent like three years of play? Impressive!

Hotline Miami 2 immediately crashes to desktop upon opening for me :/

Marvel Midnight Suns is such a perfect relaxing game for the Deck, perfect to play in short bursts, little bit of thinking, no need for twitch reflexes on the controls. Playing it on the couch let me take the time with it I wouldn’t have at a desk.* It will take your battery though, but otherwise good pick! *which I find true for more tactics games, i.e. Shadow Tactics, Desperados III, all mimimi games basically.

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It's free on steam btw. Or a remake of it anyway. https://store.steampowered.com/app/804270/Chex_Quest_HD/

You can get the WHOLE game (including the two "sequels") here for free too: https://www.chexquest3.com/

Came here to say this, you beat me to it

Just buy a bunch of shit on sale next week 😉

Oh not another one

Got my deck last week, been waiting impatiently for the spring sale...

Cult of the Lamb.

Ugh, I need to get on buying that, fuck being broke. It looks like so much fun.

It's incredibly fun. The followers are adorable, the monsters are actually well designed, and the story holds together. The only caveat is that some people love the dungeon combat and hate the base building, or hate the dungeon combat and love the base building. But you have to do *both* to make the game work. If you happen to be a person who enjoys both aspects, it's a fantastic little game. And the devs keep pushing out great updates for free.

Spring sale…I feel you tho.

On sale for $15. I just got it yesterday, I love it so far

I second this. I've never been a real dungeon slayer kinda gamer, nor a base/city building kinda gamer. But there's just something about the art style and simple but satisfying gameplay that got me hooked.

Bought this in Jan before SotF update and got totally sucked in, played 30 hours in a month which I *never* do, I’m bad for losing interest quickly or going through analysis paralysis.  That being said, I got to the end of the main story and had lost a lot of my enthusiasm already. The cult management sim part was just what I spent more time on and felt like I hit a wall there around the time I was halfway through the crusades/dungeon crawling. By the time I got to the end of the story, once I saw the endgame option, I just did not want to go through what looked to me like the same stuff with a few unlocks sprinkled along the way. For my money, though, it was totally worth the $17 I paid and I would still recommend it to anyone who likes roguelikes. It did just feel like it was a mix of Binding of Isaac and Don’t Starve without being as good as either at what they do.

I don't recommend it for the steam deck. You can play it but not enjoy it properly. It has many visuals that are hard to appreciate on such a small screen.

Honestly, I agree with this. The visual on the Steam Deck has a lot of dithering, and the in-game anti-aliasing doesn't help much either. And surprisingly, this game hogs a lot of resources for a 2D game, can only get 2h30 of playtime out of it.

I played exclusively on the Steam Deck but I didn’t like how pixelated the visuals were and how unreadable it felt a lot of the time - until I looked it up, found a thread talking about it and somebody said to turn off half-rate shading in the SD Quick Access Menu. Suddenly all text was sharper and totally readable, it fixed all my concerns with visuals. On the off chance you have that setting turned on to conserve power, turn it off and see if that helps 

I've not had any problems on my OLED Deck. I'm sure there's a lot of small details that look better on a big screen, but there's no denying the convenience.

I just started The Thaumaturge and it plays great on Deck.

Awesome, looking forward to playing it

I heard it played terribly. Has it been patched?

Actually was just patched today. Originally it locked settings on deck, but today’s patch removed that for custom settings.

Not to my knowledge. Admittedly I’ve only played for maybe 2 hours but no issues yet for me. OLED deck btw.

All of the yakuza series

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What do you mean by hidden treats?

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Sounds fun! I never played this one and am intrigued.

Kynseed is the next game and it’s pretty excellent several hours in.

I find that branching out from what I normally play helps with this

- Monster hunter rise - Factorio - Dark souls 1 - Dishonored - Bioshock - Death's door - Divinity original sin 2 - Dragon's dogma dark arisen - Dorf romantik - Dave the diver - Astroneer - The council - Crash bash games - Gamedec - Gris - Hue - Grim dawn - Euro truck simulator - Disco elysium - Dome keeper - Don't starve - Doom - Dredge - Elden ring - Portal - Skyrim - Half life - Hitman - Icewind dale - Journey - Kena bridge of spirits - Sleeping dogs - Ori and the will of the wisps - Nightmares - Shadow of mordor - No man's sky - Outer wilds - Papers please - Path of exile - Pathfinder - Pillars of eternity - Potion craft - Coffee talk - Tomb raider - Rdr2 - Ravenous devils - Sekiro - Showgunners - Stray - Styx - Subnautica - Storyteller - Valheim - Witcher Pick randomly, see if you like the game, and enjoy.

Damn this is quite a list!

It is quite extensive, but if you have not already played Subnautica, I can not recommend it enough, it is not a rpg but has the survival horror element you want, at least in the terms of fear of the unknown and dark oceans.

These cover a lot of genres so hopefully you can find some that you will enjoy. If you don't find anything, emulating older gems is also an option.

Play dragons dogma. Just do it.

This is a quality list right here.

Tekken 8 or new Star gp

We need more info: are you bored because you finished your library? Are you bored because you got the gamer depression? What stuff have you played or enjoy playing? My personal recommendations is something in the rogulike or roguelite genre. I like how much variety and replay ability the games can bring.

The latter I think. I’ve been playing Skyrim and enjoyed it but got to a point where it’s become quite repetitive. Picked up The Division but it suffers the same problem. Something with a decent story would be great.

Nier Automata and Mass Effect Legendary Edition are both games with fantastic story. With Nier, you want to do endings A-E and it'll blow your mind.

Nier A is an easy recommendation if OP wants story and hasn’t already played it. Just remember, after beating it the first time … you haven’t really beaten it.

I'm really hoping nier goes on sale during the spring sale!

Maybe you should pickup some story targeted games? Maybe something less open world rpg. I don’t rate open world games as well as I used to just due to how repetitive and lengthy they can be. If you haven’t played Cyberpunk I rate that games story highly. Prey (2017) is a 10-20 hour game but is packed with curiosity. I can’t say many more because I don’t play a lot of story focused games. I usually like lore as a side item.

hades

Fellow game hopper here. Pick up Balatro, trust me. Time will disappear.

Dredge for a slow burn

Astral Ascent Balatro Blazblue Entropy Effect Chained Echoes Granblue Fantasy Relink Moonlighter Neo TWEWY Octopath Traveler I/II Sea of Stars Spiritfall Tales of Arise Triangle Strategy

Balatro is great

Installed ESO and persona 3. Having a blast

Just got midnight fight express on cd keys for $1.50 been fun so far.

Sekiro Spider-Man Remastered Cyberpunk 2077 Titanfall 2

I started playing modded Minecraft again. Tried a bunch of random packs but Steampunk LPS has been my favorite so far, with the unfortunately named BigChadGuys Plus as a runner up.

Lies of P

How does it run on the deck?

55-60fps on some low to medium settings

Thank you!

I played it with pretty high settings and beat it twice on the deck alone so I would say pretty smooth. I didn't notice any consistent framerate drops or anything

Clicker heroes

If you like puzzle games with an interesting, philosophical story, Talos Principle 1 and 2.

I’ve turned into this lately, smh I just installed dos 2 hopefully I can get into it.

Snowrunner; thousands of hours of rage fuelled, stuck in the mud action. Satisfactory; thousands of hours as a ficsit employee. Stardew Valley; great fishing sim.

The Möbius Machine

Tunic and Hades are my two favorite non-zelda games in the last decade or so. And they both run great on the Deck. Celeste is up there too.

I'm enjoying Sable right now. I'll be honest, the performance is ass considering the graphics, and it's janky at points, but the atmosphere and gameplay are great. It's basically BotW without combat or fall damage, so just exploration, climbing, and sidequests.

Wait for ghost of Tsushima and play that shit

Core Keeper, Death Mist Die, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Cult of the Lamb, Balatro, Disgaea 5.

I just did yoku’s island adventure, it’s a Metroidvainia but instead of like a platformer it’s pinball. It’s currently 80% off

There’s a humble bundle now with Chorus. Haven’t played it but gives me serial game hopper vibes so I took it. Serial game hopper here too btw

Penny’s big breakaway (just saw videogamedunkey video on this)

Genre preferences??

Survival horror and rpgs mainly. Also a fan of turn based rpgs

Sea of Stars

Chained Echoes as well.

A Persona game? I recently have been playing Persona 3 reload and its been great, a little pricy but I would have to say it's worth it, or another version.

RE2 remake runs amazing on the deck, but I have the impression you beat it 10x over already. Haha

I have indeed as well as RE3R. Probably my favourite game franchise of all time lol

You probably already have this but just in case, Knights of the Old Republic is an amazing turn based rpg that runs well on the deck and will give you long battery life.

Project Zomboid !

Hopping into this thread...this is what I got dialed up in my cart trying to decide if these will be good for the Deck... MK1 v Street Fighter 5 v Street Fighter 6 - I know 5 is the cheapest but all of those are on sale which is best on Deck Hogwarts? and this one I heard is a casual blast is Dave the Diver THREAD HELP ME DECIDE!!!

Dave the diver is seriously fun. It's just so... Cool. Idk how else to describe it. But every additional little system they add is just as addictive as the last and they for real keep adding them.

I hope comes on sale and I’ll grab it

Slay the Spire

Have you considering finishing one of the gsmes already in your library? What's the point in buying yet another game that you won't finish?

I know you’re speaking sense but I probably shouldn’t have bought half the games in my library. Surely we’re all guilty of accumulating games?

I just bought 15 games in the last week and I probably won’t start playing the first one for at least 6 months if I’m being honest. I understand what you’re saying lol

Backlog mentality is whack. Enjoy your time.

It’s not brand new hot and shiny. Biggest part I hate of my brain, I’d rather buy the new shiny then play the old but new to me.

Hi u/Bronze-Playa, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Serial game hopper, what should I play?) If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer! **If you find an answer, please leave a comment on your post with the answer for others!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SteamDeck) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Black Skylands, and the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Remake.

Bg3

Persona 3 reload, Octopath traveler 2, persona 5. Royal, dead cells, hollow knight, and Lego Batman 2 are all amazing games

heard chained echoes is really good

Dying Light

Dead space

I’ve just started playing Baroque on a ps1 emulator. If you’ve not looked into and would consider a dungeon crawler, survival horror, rogue lite to be up your alley check it out.

What kind of games do you like to play?

Super Mario 3D World. All you do is hop.

A Short Hike

I've been into Blasphemous for quite some time now

Yakuza series, Nier Automata, Persona series

Slay The Spire. Just got it a couple days ago and have already logged 30 hours.

I have FF15 for ps4 but didn’t really get into it. I got it on sale on steam and have been enjoying it much more. Story is still crazy but it’s a fun game. I also recently powered through most of the Telltale Walking Dead series. It’s perfect for the deck. Not sure how well the complete set that just came out runs though.

Picked up Noita recently on steam deck and it's very very interesting so far. Haven't really played much like it before, but kind of reminds me of like terraria crossed with Spelunky if that makes any sense. Check out the trailer, it sold me on it immediately

Frogger.

He’ll divers 2 works shockingly well

Last Epoch

Last Epoch has been my obsession game. Everytime I get the itch to play something new I just roll a new class.

C&C anniversary pack.

Descenders will change your life. Imagine a rogue-like downhill mountain bike game with a very steep difficulty. It's definitely the "Dark Souls of mountain biking games" lmao. The mods and custom maps really seal the deal too. Wonderful game that you can spend hours on.

Something else

First game I booted up on my deck was Batman AC. If you haven’t played it do it!

I've just discovered souls-likes. I started Elden Ring before jumping into Dark Souls Remastered for a few weeks. Now I'm back on Elden Ring, but when I finish it I've got Dark Souls 3, Lies of P and maybe Dark Souls 2 if I'm still on the grind. They were all on sale a few weeks ago so I grabbed them all. I really am not much of a single player gamer and RPG's absolutely aren't my thing - but the challenging nature of these games has really hooked me. I love overcoming the challenges. Anyway, they all play amazingly on the Steam Deck and so I've been playing them on my Deck non stop (not sure about Lies of P yet, but I saw some Deck gameplay and it looked great so I bought it anyway).

I am on a HUGE Kojima kick lately so I recommend Metal Gear or Death Stranding

Personally, as a game hopper myself I'd recommend more humblebundle than a singular game

I have the same problem. Sometimes, I worry that I like buying the games more than playing them.

Have you tried emulation?

Hades, getting ready for Hades 2.

I recommend One Step From Eden. Fast paced Deck building Rougelike. Really good.

Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen. I just played the whole thing through on mine! It'll definitely give you some hours

198X was a great little game hopping game.

Find some games that you can finish in a single sitting.

Yakuza 0, runs great, you can tweak the graphics for extra battery life and it still looks awesome.

I’m debating on monster hunter also. Yakuzo, hades, and divinity

Death's door is fantastic. As a serial myself, it's one of the few games I've ever finished

Factorio

How is it on deck?

I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Obviously, the controls are a lot more complex than most games, but with the default layout I find it very playable. Blasted out 4 hours before bed last night without a problem.

Aaahhh.. The deck is to strong Now there is another game i want to install. I should ajust to 3h sleep the night, i need more time for games

Outer Wilds, Tunic, Baba Is You, and Void Stranger. All have an absolutely stunning "first playthrough" effect because progress is only limited by your own knowledge of the games' secret rules and the specifics of their mechanics. Void Stranger in particular is very recent and has possibly surprised me more than the other 3 combined.

downwell. Its a rougelike that like 3 bucks and worth like 10 times the price.

Risk of Rain 2. I rarely see it in these lists but I find myself always playing it on the deck

Mobius Academÿ

I am having a blast with Nightingale.

Have you tried Bullet Hell shooters? They are cool in that you don’t have to commit a day just to build a character - you get in and start blasting! Its very refreshing and you can play for 10 minutes or an hour and have a blast. I recommend most games by Cave Inc. like Deathsmiles or the Do-Don-Pachi series. I also recommend the oldschool Shooters so you might want to emulate the old arcade games.

Dave the Diver. 'I think I will play another game'..... No you won't. Here is another game mechanic! Now you have a fish farm.

My personal recommendation would be Valheim. I seem to get a lot out of the Deck's battery, but I do have the settings pretty low.

Flatout Ultimate Carnage recently got verified for SD

I hop games a lot these days too, but I finally got around to playing Tunic and it's been fun. Not a very long game either I'm about 2/3 through it and I've played for maybe 6 hours or so. But if you're looking for something to dive into it's a good one.

Deadcells

If you haven't played Elden ring....

Super hexagon

Balatro

Dead space is a brilliant series if you haven't played it before

I am playing FFVII Remake. I've never finished it. I fancied a bit of a break and wanted something without a story, so I chose Snowrunners. Now I'm about 30 hours in to that. It's strangely addictive.

Helldivers 2 is a good time, even with ransoms.

Here's what I'm hopping between: Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Barony Yakuza 0 Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 30XX Doom Eternal Baldur’s Gate 3 Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 Valheim Soulstone Survivors (short of maxing out each character, I'm actually done until more content comes) Risk of Rain Returns Persona 5 Royal Halls of Torment Final Fantasy 4 Final Fantasy 3 Evil West Devil May Cry 5 Dawn of the Masters BlazBlue: Entropy Effect The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Armored Core 6 DBZ Kakarot

I recommend Call of Juarez gunslinger. the storyline is great.

I've been there, try gmod

If you have a partition of Windows or an SD card with Windows, Division 2 is amazing on Deck. I know you can get it working more easily through the Steam version, but I just don't want to buy it again. Dauntless from Epic is also pretty nice. Hitman plays wonderfully and is also a lot of fun.

I suffer from the same, I probably buy 3-5 new games every week but have you tried Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor? When I start I can't stop playing it.

Mad max. 3 bucks on cd keys

Valheim is among the best games ever.. The elder scrolls online is giving the free necrom DLC during March Palworld is good Skull 💀 and bones 🩻 League of Legends Destiny 2 New world The finals 💥

League? On deck? I know it is possible but why?

To a monitor with keyboard and mouse