1w ago

I was recently gifted a Steam Deck for Christmas! If you only had a budget of, let's say 50 bucks, what would you get?

My Steam library basically only consists of Witcher 3 and Spiritfarer. I also was gifted a Humble Bundle game for Batman Arkham Knight.

I’m debating on getting Elden Ring and Cyberpunk (both without DLC).

Marvel’s Spider-Man and FF7 Interograde also look like a good value right now for 40 bucks total.

Edit, ended up doing the following:

Becoming a Steam Family member with my dad and buying the following.

FFVII Retrograde
Mass Effect Legendary
Divinity 1 and 2
Caveblazers
Portal 2
Hollow Knight

I also set up emudeck and transferred all my GBA, GBC, and GCN games that I have ROMS for.

157 comments

I recommend getting some indie and pixel art style titles instead of just going for AAA. Reason being many of these are cheaper ($5-10, sometimes even less) so you can try different genres, and these titles also tend to sip battery so you will get lots of gameplay time.
Examples I have enjoyed, in no particular order-
Animal Well
Celeste
Stardew Valley
Vampire Survivors
Caveblazers
Balatro
Slay the Spire
- I love when I come across a recommendation list like this where they’re all among my all time favorites and one thing I’d never heard of. Caveblazers doesn’t look like my kind of thing but given the context and the sub $1 price I guess I gotta check it out
- Animal Well looks amazing! And I’ve heard of Celeste. Been meaning to pick that one up.
  
  In this same vein, I believe Moonlighter is still on sale for 90% off, so $2. Can't recommend enough. Like if binding of Isaac was also a cozy shopkeeping sim.

Slay the spire.
- I really wish I liked Roguelites/deck builders haha.
  
  What do you love?
  
  Give it a shot. It's a great game.
  
  I think its $2.50 right now. You can try it out a little bit and if you don't like you can always refund?

This is 500+ hours of gameplay:
Half-Life 2 ($2)
Portal ($2)
Portal 2 ($2)
Psychonauts ($1.5)
Psychonauts 2 ($9)
Subnautica ($8)
Hollow Knight ($8)
Silksong ($16)
Hades ($8)
Disco Elysium ($4)
The Witcher 3 ($3)
Terraria ($5)
Left4Dead 2 ($2)
Kingdom Come ($5)
Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 ($6)
- Given how many games I absolutely loved are on this list, I feel like our taste in games has a huge overlap and I'm gonna have to try the others
- Grim Dawn is < $4

The Winter Sale goes 8 days still, so you have plenty of time. Some games in example from EA and Ubisoft require additional launcher or an account to play them. I usually avoid them.
Steam Deck Verified: 5 games including Cyberpunk for total $47,8
Cyberpunk: $ 21
Ace Combat 7: $4.80
Resident Evil 2: $10
Subnautica: $8
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut: $4
More interesting Steam Deck Verified games
Hollow Knight: $7.50
Stardew Valley: $9
Maneater: $4
Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition: $4
Also have a look at games that require additional account or launcher:
Red Dead Redemption 2: $ 15 (Steam Deck Playable, Requires 3rd-Party Account: Rockstar Games)
Halo Master Chief Collection: $10 (Steam Deck Verified, Requires 3rd-Party Account: Xbox Live)
- Even the makers of Disco Elysium request that you don't legitimately purchase it.
  
  Idk where this rumor came from, but the original makers have never said that lol.
- Everything on that list is great on the deck except Ace Combat 7, which shouldn't be attempted with anything but a joystick.

A bit dated but definitely worth a look: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/decktop100
Check this out as well: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/steamdecktopplayed/pastyear
Also helpful: https://steam250.com/steam_deck_verified
And finally: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/?min_rating=90&min_reviews=2500&os=steamdeck
Stuff I can recommend for the Deck without the slightest speck of doubt:
Balatro
Brotato
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
Vampire Survivors
- I'd recommend Protondb as well https://www.protondb.com/explore

Not a game recommendation specifically but a money extending protip.
Head over to ITAD and make an account. Then you can get notifications when all the games you’re interested in go on sales from legit resellers (including steam itself). As well as when there’s free games to be had. https://isthereanydeal.com/
Edit: also… if you collect the weekly freebies from epic games you can install heroic games launcher on the steam deck to play those.
- Yeah that sites great, you can set thresholds for each game if you want to wait until it's over 50% off or whatever before getting notified. It also imports your steam wishlist.
  Edit: also… if you collect the weekly freebies from epic games you can install heroic games launcher on the steam deck to play those.
  True, though you don't get the existing cloud saves so if you've started a game already it's a little annoying.
  
  It also imports your steam wishlist
  Can also directly import from gog, hb, and fanatical. EGS is on the todo list also once they have an api or even just a public facing library. All this time and egs is still pretty bare bones on features.
  True, though you don’t get the existing cloud saves so if you’ve started a game already it’s a little annoying.
  That's annoying. I wonder how hard it would be to just copy or use some kind of sync to move the files yourself.
- Second installing Heroic or Junk Store. Get those Epic freebies, but games in GoG sales as well.
  As you are new with the Deck though, using Heroic does involve using desktop mode. If you have Minecraft, you can set up Prism Launcher as well. There's also EmuDeck for emulating older systems.
  This is a bit more involved than just buying Deck verified games on the Steam store though. Get comfortable with it first. Watch some YouTube tutorials.

I'd heavily reccomend Balatro if you like card games.
Also Portal 2 if you haven't played it, it's a really good puzzle game. Despite it being a sequel, you don't really need the context from Portal 1 to play it through.
- Forgot about Portal 2! I picked up Portal 1 ages ago on Xbox 360 haha. I will definitely grab it.

Mass effect, legendary edition. Plays fantastic on the deck, value to cost ratio is very good with all three games included.
Was my first game on the deck, and it was a really great introduction.
On sale right now for $6.
- It will be the 4th time I’ve bought the trilogy haha. Worth it though. Love Mass Effect so much.
  Origins Xbox PlayStation
  
  If you had it on Origin, there's no reason you couldn't get it on your deck via the EA Play app (Origin only marginally less shit) and/or Lutris.
  Alternatively i would say you probably qualify for the black flag discount at this point, so maybe a vpn subscription might be worth allocating some cash to?

While the Deck is capable of running some big AAA games, I personally find that it shines in the low-power, "chill" games that you can play for a while, put down, and come back to when you've got some more time.
I'm a big fan of RPGs, so my #1 recommendation is Sea of Stars. Dragon Quest: Builders is also good, along with it's sequel, which is arguably better.
A good multiplayer game with endless hordes of monsters vs. your magic is The Spell Brigade.
You may not know this, but the Deck can also be plugged into a TV or monitor, and with the help of a USB-C hub, can support a keyboard and mouse too! If you go that route, then I can't recommend Dyson Sphere Program enough. Ooh! and Timberborn! It's both adorable and beautifully designed.
If you're more of a 3rd-person shooter type, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is fan-fucking-tastic (my favourite series of all time) and it's currently on sale for £5. There are 3 games in the series, and make sure you start with the first one! You don't regret it.
Finally, note that you're not bound to the Steam store if you don't want to be. If you install the Heroic Launcher for example, you can get DRM-Free games from GOG for example. Sometimes you'll find that games are available on both platforms, but cheaper on one of the other, and GOG games don't come with controls on how many people can be playing it at the same time.
- I loved playing the Dyson Sphere Program, but the controls without mouse and keyboard felt impossible to me, so I stopped playing it altogether since gaming mostly on the Stema Deck. Have you got any tips for making the controls work better?
  
  Sadly, no. That game is definitely keyboard-only. Though I have played successfully with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse in the past.
  Some games just don't lend themselves well to a controllers based input.
- On the chill games topic; Reus 2 has most of my deck (train commute) play time if I'm honest. Great chill puzzle/strategy game.

For $50 I'd get (afaict current prices):
Hades ($7.49)
Pathfinder: Kingmaker ($2.99) (make sure to force-enable the Windows build on the Steam Deck, the Linux build has issues with gamepad input on the kingdom management screen)
One Deck Dungeon ($1.99)
Slay the Spire ($2.49)
Wildermyth ($16.24)
Against the Storm ($8.99)
Terraformers ($7.99)
This totals now $48.18. If you have an additional dollar to spare, I'd also recommend to get something to scratch that retro-gaming itch:
The Settlers 2 ($2.73 on GoG - needs DOSBox, for which I've written an install guide)
That's now $50.91 in total.

Balatro and Slay the Spire both play great on the Deck and have amazing replayability.

If you never played Stardew valley that could be worth it. Hitman is also a good option - the levels are sandboxy and you can spend a lot of time figuring them out.

Vampire survivors is great for the vegetable state of mind play and usually cheap as fuck.
Core keeper is a great builder game,
Valheim
The old final fantasies like 4 5 6 7 9 10 if you can get them on sale. I've had nothing but success on steam key websites.
Mortal sin is amazing.
Slay the spire
Lego Star wars The Skywalker saga is so cheap right now and trust me its so fucking fun
Half life 1 and 2 and half life 2 episodes 1-2
Halo MCC
Portal 1 and 2
Team fortress 2 (probably want a mouse and keyboard for though)
Hogwarts legacy runs surprisingly well on deck too and it's like $6 right now
Make sure you have a game with sustenance and a game you can veg out on.
- The old final fantasies like 4 5 6 7 9 10
  This slight against FFVIII has not gone unnoticed.
  
  I think 8 isn't a good game. I have the original disks, played through it entirely when it came out and realized that I never wanted to play it ever again after beating it. Can't recommend what I think is not a good game.
- LEGO harry potter, years 1-4 is also great, as is LEGO Indiana Jones.

Be sure to check out Steam’s own “great on deck” category in the store. Each game will also have an indication from Valve on the quality/playability with regard to the Steam Deck
- I have been browsing here and ProtonDB religiously since I suspected I’d get a SD for Christmas.

My retro slanted suggestions:
Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters is one of the greatest games of all time and it’s free. There’s a Steam version, but I think you lose a few of the original music tracks in exchange for easier management. They’re also crowdsourcing a sequel, about 30 years later.
https://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php
I’d also recommend UFO 50. It’s a treasure trove.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/
- Ur-Quan... isn't that the one that stole the plot from mass effect?!!! /s ;) Glad to see it mentioned... great game. So many hours spent playing that in story campaign but also super melee multiplayer back in the day. Great soundtrack.
  
  The soundtrack is absolutely golden. It’s truly one of the greatest games ever made.

Hades! It's an incredible game, and especially good on deck.

Tomb Raider Survival Trilogy for $7.19
Shadow of Mordor/War for $6.99
Prodigal for $1.49 - Zelda plus date sim
Toem for $3.99 - gotta photograph em all
Crosscode for $5.99 - SPMMOOTY
Saint's Row 4 $2.99
Vampire Survivors for $3.74 - everybody is legally required to have a copy
20 Small Mazes for $0 Doronko Wanko $0
My main recommendation is "don't put all of your money into a bunch of PS5 AAA games". PS5-ish games fit "if we turn all of the settings down, and render in 1/4 rez, and then AI upscale, and still your battery only lasts an hour". It often isn't a great experience here.
A strength of the Deck is in delivering an endless back catalog of PS4 and prior styles of games. Another is in bringing forward a ton of indie games that can't win at "marketing", can't afford to develop PS5-level visuals, so they fight like hell on "mixing up new and interesting gameplay" and "price".
- That’s a fair point. I’ll keep that in mind while I play.

Titan Fall 2 is one of the greatest shooter ever made, it’s constantly at 8$
- I would have suggested too, but it requires Origin client and it must run in the background while playing. And requires an EA account on top of it. The game is rated Steam Deck Playable, so not really the best experience on the Deck.
  Which is a shame, because the single player campaign is so nice. I don't know if the online component still works.
  
  Afaik it installs a gutted version of ea app (fka origin), online is still playable but if it ever becomes unplayable then get Northstar client and enjoy a shitload more freedom and mods, including whole gamemodes
  
  I have it on console, didn’t know it was a pain to play on steam deck. What a shame

First, emulators. Then Demos, so meny Demos/Trials. Hell, on a Deck? Even some Free2Play stuff would be less insufferable than the same on my phone.
... but you need to figure out what you want to spend that money on for yourself. A lot of good stuff is on-sale right now. Check out isthereanydeal.com
- Emulators, you say? Which… uh… which ones?
  
  Emudeck for (basically) all of them https://www.emudeck.com/

Cyberpunk is a great choice in my opinion, especially nowadays where most of the initial shortcomings are fixed and ironed out.
- There is also a linux native mod manager on Nexus if you ever want to mod the game.

Slay the spire for sure

You can get the following games for €50:
Turbo Overkill
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
The Orange Box
Bioshock
Bioshock 2
Exo One
PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+
Dishonored
Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered
This list is a good mix of awesome games, currently the total price for this looks like €49,88 in Sweden, this is amazing value!
Turbo Overkill - A fun and fast paced arcade FPS in a dystopic 80s futuristic setting.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - one of the best platformers I know, amazing soundtrack, super frustrating at times, but soo much fun!
The Orange Box - Needs no introduction, one sale for €3.90, increadible value.
Bioshock snd Bioshock 2 - Absolute gaming classics, and that is for a very good reason.
Exo One - A bit weird sci-fi game, beautiful and very engaging.
PAC-MAN Championship Edition - Take Pacman, Neon colours, fast synth beat, challenges and an online leaderbord, when these combine you get this super fun game.
Dishonored - A great game, a stealth game with magic powers, a classic!
Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-Tered edition - Do you like destruction physics? Then this game is for you!

I've put a disgusting amount of hours into Emberward. It's Tower Defense but no mtx and has a really fun Tetris blocks gimmck to build lanes.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2459550/Emberward/
Yes it's early access but it doesn't matter, the game is nearly done anyways, also on sale currently. There's good Steam Input profiles for the Deck. Dev is adding controller suppport for 1.0 but this doesn't really matter on a Steam Deck.
I've been replaying Dragon Age Origins at work modded via Nexus Mods and running DAO-Modmanager via WINE under Steam's compatdata prefix.

Does somebody already mentioned Grim Dawn? Diablo II like ARPG. From what I’ve heard well playable on the deck. Check out the mentioned 3rd party sites first a good deal, the all in one (two expansions) set should be around 30ish bucks.
- I really enjoyed Grim Dawn, I dont replay my games (quite a few in my backlog and very limited time) but if i'm replaying any, Grim Dawn would be the one.

get Cyberpunk. The game is great for the current price (also check gog, ITAD)

Games I have particularly enjoyed on the deck (that I haven't seen others recommend already) and are relatively cheap: Outer Wilds (not outer worlds), Hardspace Shipbreaker, Enter the Gungeon

dragon age origins, inquisition, veilguard. all on pretty hefty sales right now.
all excellent games. Hades and Hades 2 are also great ones.
Terraria is very cheap and is always a blast as well.
- Origins is awesome, but does it have controller support for the deck?
  
  honestly you can make any setup work with steam input. I even play WoW with it.
  both docked and handheld mode.

Install the PS2 games (or whatever was your first console) of your childhood and bring back old memories. For the PS2 I can especially recommend the OpenGOAL project which let‘s you play Jak & Daxter with modern resolutions. It is basically free if you (like me) still own the games anyway.

Kingdom come deliverance really drew me in on the Deck. Currently €6.

CP2077 is a great game! Runs really well on the deck. But so is the Witcher 3 which also runs really well on the deck! Personally cp2077 would be the one I pick.
If you have a little extra money and want to tinker a bit, you can install Decky and the plugins Power Tools, Decky LSFG-VK from decky and Lossless Scaling from the steam store. Decky LSFG-VK needs Lossless Scaling to work and I think it is around 5 bucks. With the above installed you can get around 100 fps in both cp2077, The Witcher 3 and many other games. I haven't found a game that these plugins dont work on and increase performance and playability albeit at the cost of battery drain.
I hope you many happy hours of gaming on your new deck. I really love mine!

If you’re on a budget, make sure to redeem the weekly free games from Epic and Amazon if you have Prime. You can play them all on your deck via Heroic Games Launcher.

You're getting all kinds of recommendations for Steam games. But what about free games? In desktop mode, the "discovery" app let's you install programs, including games.
There's tons of free games. I'll admit a lot of them aren't the highest quality. They are mostly open source clones of more popular games.
One game I recommend in particular is Super Tux Kart. (Tux is the mascot of Linux, and SteamOS is Linux based.) It's a kart racer game. It's one of the highest quality open source clones out there, though. Great graphics too.
If you own Minecraft, the Prism launcher will allow you to run it in the Deck. Just go into the steam menu in desktop mode and click "add non stream game" to add any apps you install this way to your steam menu. Now they can be launched in handheld mode as well!

Satisfactory sucked up about 3 months of my time and thinking about it as I type this I really want to start a new play through.

I would probably get:
Megabonk (£6.37/$8.61)
Fallout 3 Game of the Year edition (£5.27/$7.12)
A Game About Digging A Hole (£3.17/$4.28)
Power Wash Simulator 2 (£16.99/$22.96) or Katamari Damacy REROLL (£15.99/$21.61)

Get Rimworld, and write a letter to your friends and family that you wouldn't see them in a while. Consider spending the rest of the money on IV stand so you stay hydrated.
Rimworld is a drug, it should be classified as a controlled substance.
- can confirm, wife is addicted and so was I for a while. I relapse every so often.

Both valheim and project zomboid can be had fire less than $20 each. That leaves some cash left over for a couple dollar games that look interesting.
Both games are amazingly fun and you can get a self hosted server set up for fun with friends... If you have another computer available.
- Second for valheim. Amazing game

In a thread like this a long time ago someone recommended Nail’d Steam page
It’s typically 0.99 and just a silly, fun racer. It’s fun to kill some time on.
The killer app for steam deck for me was emulators. I played through some Zelda games (windwaker, OOT via ship of Harkinian). And some Pokémon. What’s nice is for emulators the battery life feels near infinite, and you can hit the power button for instant sleep. Makes picking up games on down time really easy.
Last recommendation is outer wilds. Played great on the deck and the controls are good.

Vampire survivors is a couple bucks and worth every penny. I got slay the spire balatro bundle for 13 bucks and would also recommend.
- I've been playing this the last two days. It is great, but very addicting.

Hades is a great roguelite and is on sale for $9.75CAD right now. If you like that then there's also Hades 2. It has a really cool story built into it which at least at the time was more unique in the genre.
Try to find slightly older games and they'll have steeper discounts.

@TheMinions
Hades & Hades II
- I actually don’t like Roguelites haha
  
  There are literally dozens of us hahaha
  
  @TheMinions oh, then don't get those, then. 😄
  
  I generally dont either, but these are some of my favourite games because the narrative progression is really good and interesting. I'm not saying that they'll be for you, but it might be worth your consideration.

Doom (2016) or Doom Eternal. Both fantastic games, run on anything and I saw Doom Eternal on sale foe 10%.

Axiom verge and ori bundles are great

You might check out some of the different game bundles available right now, they can quickly give you a lot of good games to play for cheap.
One month of humble choice ($15) will get you Nine Sols, Like a Dragon Gaiden, Streets of Rage 4, and a bunch of other games.
Fanatical has a ton of build a bundle available right now for their winter sale. Of those bundles, the Prestige, Best of Platinum, Winter SuperStars, and Play on the Go bundles are all especially recommendes.

Not sure what games you like, but I will suggest Terraria to almost anyone. 50% of currently on steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/Terraria/

Tactical Breach Wizards!!! Then save the other $40ish for the next sale.

Lies of p, wildermyth, silksong, divinity original sin 2, caves of qud, persona 5 royal, baldurs gate 3

Megabonk, Balatro, or Cyberpunk are my rotation. Hunt those steam sales

The Messenger is cheap right now and such a good platformer!

I got a lot of mileage off my SD with Steamworld games, and they are very cheap right now : SteamWorld Essentials
And if you're in the mood for puzzle platformers, the Trine games run beautifully : Trine: Ultimate Collection

Honestly at that price point I'd pick up a few cheap but addictive games like balatro and into the breach
Hades 2 is absolutely amazing as well

If you haven't already got it, Hades

157 comments