I've actually run into several older games that have major issues on Windows but run great on Deck. Many of these require fan patches to fix their windows issues (stuff like increasing how much ram the game can use, etc).
A recent example was I gave a friend a copy of FEAR, just to discover it ran way worse on his high end PC than it does on my Steam Deck.
Everything is Crab. A roguelite evolution game where the challenge is to out survive the other creatures. Don't let the cute graphics fool you. It's a lot of fun and the challenge ramps up quite a bit as you proceed through the difficulty levels.
It's alright, certainly high quality, the difficulty curve is kind of wack. Keeping money in the early game is brutal, but it doesn't take long until the game pulls a 180 and you don't lose money ever, on top of facetanking half your problems with sheer stats and item effects. Reminds me of phase locket back in SK and how it makes half the bosses trivial.
I wasn't impressed by vanilla Shovel Knight and only loved how original and smooth all the DLC were, this feels like going back to SK somehow - even if on paper there's tons of original ideas here. If you like Shovel of Hope or 2D Zelda (which it sticks to a lot, including the problems) you'll like this, and if you like both you'll love this, probably.
My answer is a bit cheating, because its emulation of Playstation 1 via RetroArch. The game is Dark Deception 3: Dark Delusion. It looks good, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. The manual is not needed, because the game teaches with tutorials. If you want, have a look at screenshots to get an idea how the game looks. Overall game seem to be okayish in gameplay, but makes up with an unusual game concept and good soundtrack.
The game is an Tactical Action Adventure game, with levels to pass. So its more a linear game with stages. Controls are not great, more like tank controls from third person. The idea is to run around, setup traps and attacks and with one of the buttons "use" them at the right time. The character is basically a witch. Bring up the "map" to set traps for the associated button. I'm quite early on, so not sure if I will ever finish this. If you choose to play this game, be aware that there is no autosave and you have to save manually after each stage.
Only 3 hours in so far, the combat is a bit challenging already, and I’m still exploring around the starting city.
Finding secret areas is as fun as it was in Shovel Knight, music is great, art is gorgeous, the only complaint so far is how you get stuck with the starting weapon and switching it later requires a lot of money
I just installed Chip's Challenge after realizing it was free. It's alright in game mode (there's an existing community control scheme that works well) but better on desktop since you can access the dropdown menus that way. Switched to the Win theme and got a solid dose of nostalgia.
As with another reply, I'm also "cheating." I started up a save file for GTA: London 1969, emulating the PSX version. Apparently, apart from second-hand and sailing the seas, the original GTA (and its expansions) and GTA2 are unobtanium for PC these days. Kind of sad to see.
Dust, the Twilight princess port, but I just got to the temple of time and am hard crashing every time I put the master sword in. So I'm going to find something else now. Maybe elden ring again?
They've published a bunch of updates, with pretty detailed change logs. Have you checked to see if they addressed that issue?
I haven't got nearly that far. It's an absolutely amazing recomp and I love that it exists, but as I'm fiddling with the controls and the camera and the combat I'm just thinking "Breath of the Wild exists, why am I doing this?"
I haven't, but I'm also fairly lazy and without a robust log, I figured it was a one off bug. But thank you for reminding me that the smartest among us need reminders of oversight.
Slowly rebuilding some of my Switch library on Steam (I prefer my Deck) so I picked up both Cattails games on sale (total of ~$9 atm!) and been replaying those. Very sweet, easy games for a quick dose of fun.
The Mystery Of The Droods. It runs perfectly, it records perfectly, I can save the game, and I didn't even have to gut my PC to get it to work. Linux appears to be the ideal environment for the skeletonized remains of ancient Windows games.
Time to harrass Vivec's well-dressed cousin, then poison a bum and steal his money.
Mostly replaying older games this month. One new pickup is "Return of the Obra Dinn", which looks pretty interesting. I think it will be (eventually) a fun puzzle to put together, but I'm not sold on the on-boarding process of being pushed from one memory to another. Kinda feels like the game is dictating the pace early on, and I feel like that could have been handled better. But I've heard enough good things about it that I expect I'll enjoy it a lot by the end.
I really enjoyed Outer Wilds, and Obra Dinn came up in some recommendations I read based on that. While it's true that the games share a limitation that you can only play them "properly" one time, they aren't yet hitting the same itch for me.
Also grabbed Chants of Sennaar awhile back, which I think may be similar to Obra Dinn.
Lots of No Man's Sky and a bit of Paralives. Formerly I also enjoyed a ton of Euro Truck Sim 2 and Deep Rock Galactic on the Steam Deck.
And some 11/10 story exploration games that sadly can only be played once: Outer Wilds and Tacoma.
Last month I finished up Transiruby, which is a really fun and breezy Metroidvania. The art style and the incredible chiptune soundtrack gave me big Axiom Verge vibes, despite being quite tonally different.
My June project is getting TotK emulation working satisfactorily, which finally happened last night after far too much trial and error. I know Nintendo's lawyers have made everyone scared but the amount of vagueposting around this subject is maddening. This means I can likely sell my Switch as it was the only game I had left to play. It also means I have to play the first 10 hours of the game again...
Do you mind sharing your TotK setup? I never finished it because my kids always want the switch, and I find the ergonomics really uncomfortable to play for long
Sure, with the caveat that everyone's definition of "playable" is different.
I am using the latest Eden AppImage and a 1.4.2 ROM. I didn't change anything in Eden besides controller setup and increasing the RAM to 8GB (this has to be done in the game config). This gets you fps in the teens and 20s.
Then I ran the NX Optimizer AppImage. I used the Steam Deck preset and chose the 2nd of the 2 TotK entries on the game menu. The only change I made was the lower shadows to 512x. I don't know if that did anything... the shadows do look pretty bad. Then I clicked "Apply". Note that if you have multiple emulators, NX is going to try to figure out which one to apply to. I'd get rid of anything that's not Eden AND the settings folders that are in ~/.local/share.
NX adds a "mod" entry you can view and turn on and off in the game settings. It also installs something called UltraCam, and you'll know that because it changes the game opening and adds UI elements. Now I have no clue what any of this stuff is doing. It's poorly explained... Like is it just modifying emulator settings you could do yourself? Is it doing something to the ROM? No clue. You can make adjustments to UltraCam settings by hitting both triggers combined with left stick click. I changed resolution to 900p, and turned on FSR. But it's unclear how much that helped.
Anyway, the result is a max, locked 30 fps. It will dip while shaders are caching and when you first use ultrahand and in villages and other areas with fire. It is not smooth by any means but it's "mostly smooth". Usually in the open world and in shrines it's stable. There's also some banding from what I assume is anti-aliasing, but I don't see any turned on in any setting I can locate, so who knows.
Like I said, it's good enough for me. Like you the ergonomics of the Steam Deck are so much better than Switch that I'll take the compromise here.
OHD is a blast! It is like Battlefield but moddable and not owned by EA or Tencent or some other worthless massive company. Oh yeah it is free, and not in a sketchy way, it is a genuinely community focused game. No microtransactions or any of that crap.
Wow Classic HC & GW Reforged
The only two games I play on Steamdeck and in general.
I have horrible news.
Ring works perfectly on Linux. Apparently this game is an absolute wanker on Windows. Here it just glugs along gluggingly.
I've actually run into several older games that have major issues on Windows but run great on Deck. Many of these require fan patches to fix their windows issues (stuff like increasing how much ram the game can use, etc).
A recent example was I gave a friend a copy of FEAR, just to discover it ran way worse on his high end PC than it does on my Steam Deck.
Can't stop playing Slay The Spire 2, so gooood
Everything is Crab. A roguelite evolution game where the challenge is to out survive the other creatures. Don't let the cute graphics fool you. It's a lot of fun and the challenge ramps up quite a bit as you proceed through the difficulty levels.
I just bought Mina, but I just keep on going back to my old comfort game, Binding of Isaac.
How is Mina? I've heard some mixed takes on it, but it being from the Shovel Knight devs makes me want to jump on it.
It's alright, certainly high quality, the difficulty curve is kind of wack. Keeping money in the early game is brutal, but it doesn't take long until the game pulls a 180 and you don't lose money ever, on top of facetanking half your problems with sheer stats and item effects. Reminds me of phase locket back in SK and how it makes half the bosses trivial.
I wasn't impressed by vanilla Shovel Knight and only loved how original and smooth all the DLC were, this feels like going back to SK somehow - even if on paper there's tons of original ideas here. If you like Shovel of Hope or 2D Zelda (which it sticks to a lot, including the problems) you'll like this, and if you like both you'll love this, probably.
My answer is a bit cheating, because its emulation of Playstation 1 via RetroArch. The game is Dark Deception 3: Dark Delusion. It looks good, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. The manual is not needed, because the game teaches with tutorials. If you want, have a look at screenshots to get an idea how the game looks. Overall game seem to be okayish in gameplay, but makes up with an unusual game concept and good soundtrack.
The game is an Tactical Action Adventure game, with levels to pass. So its more a linear game with stages. Controls are not great, more like tank controls from third person. The idea is to run around, setup traps and attacks and with one of the buttons "use" them at the right time. The character is basically a witch. Bring up the "map" to set traps for the associated button. I'm quite early on, so not sure if I will ever finish this. If you choose to play this game, be aware that there is no autosave and you have to save manually after each stage.
Metro Last Light Redux. Better than the first one and looks good.
It makes me want to read the books.
Mina the Hollower
Only 3 hours in so far, the combat is a bit challenging already, and I’m still exploring around the starting city.
Finding secret areas is as fun as it was in Shovel Knight, music is great, art is gorgeous, the only complaint so far is how you get stuck with the starting weapon and switching it later requires a lot of money
@Fubarberry
LEGO Batman - Legacy of the Dark Knight
And
Poncle’s
Vampire Crawlers
💪🏼
Slay the spire 2. Still addicted.
It's so much harder than the first game. I have yet to win a run with either star guy or doom skeleton. Still, great sequel so far.
I just installed Chip's Challenge after realizing it was free. It's alright in game mode (there's an existing community control scheme that works well) but better on desktop since you can access the dropdown menus that way. Switched to the Win theme and got a solid dose of nostalgia.
As with another reply, I'm also "cheating." I started up a save file for GTA: London 1969, emulating the PSX version. Apparently, apart from second-hand and sailing the seas, the original GTA (and its expansions) and GTA2 are unobtanium for PC these days. Kind of sad to see.
Dust, the Twilight princess port, but I just got to the temple of time and am hard crashing every time I put the master sword in. So I'm going to find something else now. Maybe elden ring again?
They've published a bunch of updates, with pretty detailed change logs. Have you checked to see if they addressed that issue?
I haven't got nearly that far. It's an absolutely amazing recomp and I love that it exists, but as I'm fiddling with the controls and the camera and the combat I'm just thinking "Breath of the Wild exists, why am I doing this?"
I haven't, but I'm also fairly lazy and without a robust log, I figured it was a one off bug. But thank you for reminding me that the smartest among us need reminders of oversight.
The last few times I was on I was preoccupied with Slay The Spire 2 and Audiosurf 2 for Steam games specifically.
Otherwise, I have slowed down on it since I'm in post game, but I was busy with a fun pokemon fan game ( Pokémon Copper ) in the Azuri region.
Yeah, I haven't played on it much outside maybe those 3 games.
Slowly rebuilding some of my Switch library on Steam (I prefer my Deck) so I picked up both Cattails games on sale (total of ~$9 atm!) and been replaying those. Very sweet, easy games for a quick dose of fun.
Fae Tactics and LOK Digital are the new ones.
Most likely will not finish either game.
The Mystery Of The Droods. It runs perfectly, it records perfectly, I can save the game, and I didn't even have to gut my PC to get it to work. Linux appears to be the ideal environment for the skeletonized remains of ancient Windows games.
Time to harrass Vivec's well-dressed cousin, then poison a bum and steal his money.
Mostly replaying older games this month. One new pickup is "Return of the Obra Dinn", which looks pretty interesting. I think it will be (eventually) a fun puzzle to put together, but I'm not sold on the on-boarding process of being pushed from one memory to another. Kinda feels like the game is dictating the pace early on, and I feel like that could have been handled better. But I've heard enough good things about it that I expect I'll enjoy it a lot by the end.
Hope you find it an enjoyable experience. Make sure you play with headphones.
I found Curse of the Golden Idol gave a similar hit as Return of the Obra Dinn.
Did you mean Case of the Golden Idol? Looking up Curse doesn't bring up anything.
Yes, sorry. It is Case of the Golden Idol. Thanks for the correction.
I really enjoyed Outer Wilds, and Obra Dinn came up in some recommendations I read based on that. While it's true that the games share a limitation that you can only play them "properly" one time, they aren't yet hitting the same itch for me.
Also grabbed Chants of Sennaar awhile back, which I think may be similar to Obra Dinn.
I fucking loved Obra Dinn it was-RING DING DING DINGDINGDING DING DING DING.
I'm addicted to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor on Deck.
Great game, although these days I mostly play it on my phone.
Lots of No Man's Sky and a bit of Paralives. Formerly I also enjoyed a ton of Euro Truck Sim 2 and Deep Rock Galactic on the Steam Deck. And some 11/10 story exploration games that sadly can only be played once: Outer Wilds and Tacoma.
Last month I finished up Transiruby, which is a really fun and breezy Metroidvania. The art style and the incredible chiptune soundtrack gave me big Axiom Verge vibes, despite being quite tonally different.
My June project is getting TotK emulation working satisfactorily, which finally happened last night after far too much trial and error. I know Nintendo's lawyers have made everyone scared but the amount of vagueposting around this subject is maddening. This means I can likely sell my Switch as it was the only game I had left to play. It also means I have to play the first 10 hours of the game again...
Do you mind sharing your TotK setup? I never finished it because my kids always want the switch, and I find the ergonomics really uncomfortable to play for long
Sure, with the caveat that everyone's definition of "playable" is different.
I am using the latest Eden AppImage and a 1.4.2 ROM. I didn't change anything in Eden besides controller setup and increasing the RAM to 8GB (this has to be done in the game config). This gets you fps in the teens and 20s.
Then I ran the NX Optimizer AppImage. I used the Steam Deck preset and chose the 2nd of the 2 TotK entries on the game menu. The only change I made was the lower shadows to 512x. I don't know if that did anything... the shadows do look pretty bad. Then I clicked "Apply". Note that if you have multiple emulators, NX is going to try to figure out which one to apply to. I'd get rid of anything that's not Eden AND the settings folders that are in
~/.local/share.NX adds a "mod" entry you can view and turn on and off in the game settings. It also installs something called UltraCam, and you'll know that because it changes the game opening and adds UI elements. Now I have no clue what any of this stuff is doing. It's poorly explained... Like is it just modifying emulator settings you could do yourself? Is it doing something to the ROM? No clue. You can make adjustments to UltraCam settings by hitting both triggers combined with left stick click. I changed resolution to 900p, and turned on FSR. But it's unclear how much that helped.
Anyway, the result is a max, locked 30 fps. It will dip while shaders are caching and when you first use ultrahand and in villages and other areas with fire. It is not smooth by any means but it's "mostly smooth". Usually in the open world and in shrines it's stable. There's also some banding from what I assume is anti-aliasing, but I don't see any turned on in any setting I can locate, so who knows.
Like I said, it's good enough for me. Like you the ergonomics of the Steam Deck are so much better than Switch that I'll take the compromise here.
Thanks! I'll give it a shot one of these days.
@Fubarberry I just beat #CostumeQuest & #CatQuest over the week.
Now I'm thinking about continuing Costume Quest 2 or Death's Door.
Right now I’m rotating this games:
EDIT: LibrARian is one of those games that seems cool for a stream or let’s play.
It speeds up really quickly after the initial friction, they gave you too powerful habilites. Once finished the game there no incentive to play again.
Operation Harsh Doorstop multiplayer playtest.
I played in the match in this video!
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=oTEBj3PiB10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEBj3PiB10
OHD is a blast! It is like Battlefield but moddable and not owned by EA or Tencent or some other worthless massive company. Oh yeah it is free, and not in a sketchy way, it is a genuinely community focused game. No microtransactions or any of that crap.