[Discussion] What games are you playing on your Deck or Machine? - September 2026

60 points · 42 comments · view on lemmy.world

42 Comments

rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 4d (2 replies)

I showed my girlfriend how to stream Baldur's Gate 3 from the PC three weeks ago. Haven't been able to play anything since, but I guess this is what's being played on the deck currently.

SmoothOperator@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d (1 reply)

I find BdG3 runs very well directly on the deck, what's gained from streaming?

rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 3d

I also ran it on the deck before but did not enjoy how stuttery it became in Act 3. Streaming is more smooth, in my experience, and allows you to play the game at higher settings. At the deck's native resolution, I can basically max everything.

Sgarcnl@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 4d (1 reply)

Im grinding on Noita, but without a mouse and keyboard its probably impossible more so than normal.

Minnels@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 3d

You say this but then there is this streamer named LetsSufferTogether that has done 34 orbs, no hit, sun quest or something like that playing only on the controller.

Never give up.

Guitar@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 4d (1 reply)

I've been playing through Panzer Dragoon Saga for the first time. My god what an incredible game.

Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com · 3 pts · 3d

oh I love this game! maybe my favorite JRPG, or Grandia 2 (can you tell I don't like straight turn based games? lol)

Ardyvee@europe.pub · 8 pts · 3d (2 replies)

I tried Vampire Survivors and despite how fun it was to see the game played, I am not sure I actually enjoy playing it. Then again, I have put quite a few hours on Time Wasters, and that may just be more my jam.

Otherwise? Playing Infested Planet. The control scheme is serviceable, if awkward, but I can also just pick it up whenever which is the use case for the Steam Deck.

thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 2d

Last month I wanted to get into Vampire Survivors. But there was this other game I saw all the time, Brotato. After reading reviews about both games, I decided to play Brotato. And off course the price was never the issue, only my time. I'll expand to other games later. Players said that Brotato has enemies in waves, with Pause in between to upgrade. I liked that idea more, which gave it a little bit of tactical note. Also the builds and characters you can choose in the beginning have huge implications and changes the playstyle dramatically.

So my suggestion is, have a look at Brotato. The other game suggestions I got last months have not played yet.

rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2d

Your experience with Vampire Survivors matches mine really well. It did hook me, but soon after, I started to feel like I was in this "ooh, piece of candy" gag on Family Guy. Almost like a gambling-induced dopamine rush, which is when I noticed that I wasn't actually having fun.

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 4d (3 replies)

I'm still mostly playing Dragonsword Awakening. Really fun game, and a great value for it's asking price. Plus the devs have been quick to patch bugs (including steam deck specific bugs) and add in quality of life changes. There's also a lot of free content updates planned.

Also have been playing through Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Pretty good game, although I had to look up advice on some of the puzzles/breakable walls I missed.

I'm holding off on getting into any other games that are too large at the moment, want to make sure I'm not tied up when Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter releases later this month.

EvilBit@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 4d (2 replies)

Also have been playing through Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Pretty good game

As a Rather Old Person, you shut your damn mouth. That game is a masterpiece.

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 4d (1 reply)

To be honest it was a weird hole in my gaming history. I've played later Castlevania's, and I've always been a huge Metroid fan.

I think I'm largely judging it by comparing it to Super Metroid. Both games were ones I returned to after playing newer titles in their series (mainly on GBA and DS).

Playing SotN for the first time, I find it good, but it feels like it hasn't held up as well as super metroid. When I went back and played super Metroid for the first time, I found it to be a great metroid game with slightly outdated controls. Going back to SotN after playing newer Castlevania games has felt rougher. SM is famous for how it guides players with an invisible hand, but SotN progression often seems more obscure, I've been trying to play without guides, and while I'm doing great at finding health/heart upgrades, I've been struggling to find the actual abilities for progression. The game also likes destroyable ceilings/floors for a game that doesn't give great options for attacking up or down.

Anyways it's good, I'm enjoying it, but playing it with no nostalgia and no prior knowledge on patching/puzzles has involved a lot of meandering around the map.

EvilBit@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3d

Fair enough. I always felt like it was just tricky enough that it didn’t feel like you just railroaded from one upgrade to the next and instead needed to put some effort into finding the next move. And honestly none of the later ones ever stuck with me the same way. I found that by the end of SotN, I knew the map pretty well. In newer Castlevania games, I was checking the map constantly.

Metroid has always felt like a different beast to me, and weirdly a little less compelling despite my preference for sci-fi over fantasy. No hate, they’re great games and I’ve finished several. Just less transformative to me.

I always thought it was both unfair and a hilarious testament that SotN was so good it spawned the genre “Metroidvania” when the formula was basically just “Metroid” to begin with.

kalpol@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 3d

Subnautica! Holy cow that game is absorbing

toomanypancakes@crazypeople.online · 5 pts · 3d (1 reply)

I just finished Silksong again, so right now I'm playing Memoria. It's pretty decent, not amazing, but I'm having fun with it all the same.

kalpol@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 3d

Hollow Knight is an amazing game and I can't spend the time on it I need to get good. It is sad

Zombiepirate@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 4d (1 reply)

Tangentially related: I put GameNative on my phone, and Caves of Qud plays great through Steam using the same FEX translation layer that the Frame will have. What an awesome game to always have on me.

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 4d

Oh that's tempting, they've been teasing the CoQ mobile version forever now (7+ years?), and I've always wanted to play it on the go. I've got it on my Deck always, but I need good game on my phone much more than on my deck.

SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 5 pts · 4d (1 reply)

Pathogenic. Quite a fun twin stick shooter

Vengefu1Tuna@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 4d

I just picked this up as well, it's been a blast. The amount of possible variations between builds is crazy. It's going to be a while before I put this one down.

uuj8za@piefed.social · 4 pts · 3d (2 replies)

Risk of Rain 2! Still haven't beat it...

Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3d (1 reply)

Define "beat it". Because I've reached endings in that game but wouldn't say I've beaten it either.

uuj8za@piefed.social · 2 pts · 2d

Just beat it.

(Beat it.)

bluesquid0741b@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 3d

Just messing about with some dos classics using dosbox-pure on retro deck.

Cyberdogs, Tyrian 2000, Hocus Pocus, Desert Strike, God of Thunder, Abuse, Mortal Kombat 2, Sango Fighter, Raptor. A few others.

maxsettings@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 3d

Just got my steam machine a few weeks ago, I’ve been playing the plucky squire and combolands. Both run well despite some minor issues I’ve been having with it.

TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 4d (7 replies)

Just finished up Pragmata! Great game. 100%ed it in about 20 hours. Sadly didn’t get my settings dialed in until about hour 13 hahaha.

I was torn between Expedition 33 and FF7 Remake + Rebirth. And I think I’m heavily leaning towards FF7.

I haven’t played the originals, and really only know about

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Aerith. :::

So I’m excited to start it!

I grabbed a couple if mods (Less Grunting, Metal Chocobo for Buster Sword swap, and a DSR disabling mod).

If you recommend any others, let me know!

mursejoy@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 3d (4 replies)

Are the mods for FF7 pretty Linux friendly?

I haven’t really modded anything since I departed windows.

TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 3d (3 replies)

Most of the ones I’ve seen are the standard

“Drop this .pak in a ~mods folder” type mods.

But I only have a few mods. A texture to replace the buster sword with the metal Chocobo from Kingdom Hearts, a restore Tifa’s outfit to the OG version type mod (this removed the black undershirt thing), and one to get more materia in stores.

mursejoy@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 3d (2 replies)

Thanks for the info! I’ll look into it more myself. Idk why I thought modding on Linux was impossible

TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 3d (1 reply)

Yeah!

The more complex ones I’ve seen are Mass Effect and anything on the Resident Evil engine.

Anything with mod dependencies (like REframework) has some issues. I just kept having issues with crashing when trying to mod a skin for Diana in PRAGMATA and setting up a currency multiplier haha.

But I think this was related to my incorrect/unstable settings. As I kept seeing the game crash after the first and before second boss fight.

mursejoy@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 3d

Hmm. I haven’t got to the second boss fight in Pragmata yet. I really want to go back and finish it before the end of the year. I got caught up with Pokemon ZA while my PC was packed away.

I liked that I played so far though. We loved RE9, Capcom is on a generational run.

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 4d (1 reply)

Pragmata was great, I really enjoyed it. Some of the simulation trials were brutal though, I never felt like beating them. I also always felt like there should be a better control setup for playing it on the deck.

Expedition 33 is really good, I played it shortly after launch and the default performance was a bit rough. I installed a performance mod (that disabled lumens among other things) and it let the game run and look decent. The game itself is fantastic, gives a lot of options to play it from mastering enemy parry/dodge patterns or mixing and matching the skills and bonuses to make broken combos. It really rewards experimenting, you constantly feel like you're discovering new broken strategies, but then the game always introduces new much stronger enemies that force you to come up with something even more broken.

TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 4d

I should clarify I only got 100% exploration and beat the enhanced bosses in Unknown Signal for Pragmata. I could usually get the “important” rewards from the trials but gave up on some of them pretty quickly.

I hope they announce a sequel soon, but would be perfectly happy if it was a one-off game.

I’ve got some performance mod for E33 and it seems pretty solid. Only issue I’ve seen so far is that the hair all turns white in the character select menu. Manor might look funky too tbh. But I was getting a very stable 30 FPS in the prologue with solid looking graphics.

I also beat act 1 on Xbox about a year ago, but also haven’t touched my Xbox since I got a Deck… so I’m excited to play the prologue and act 1 again.

orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts · 3 pts · 4d

I’ve been playing Palworld (it scratches an itch for me), and Cultic. A good mix of boomer shooter and third-person resource gathering and building lol.

pathief@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d

Replaying Final Fantasy 8 because why not :D

NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 3d

Simpsons hit and run. I am playing ps2 on the deck but wonder if I should try and get the modded version for pc going instead. Any tips? I have the rars the would let you play from a USB on windows....

Don_alForno@feddit.org · 2 pts · 2d

I'm playing Persona 3 reload. The "only one big dungeon" thing bothers me less than I thought. It's a shame that the daytime activities are also far less fleshed out than in P5 but I guess that was to be expected from an older title.

Anyway, it runs like a charm outputting upscaled to my living room TV.

dimjim@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 4d

I’ve been playing moonlight, which lets me play games on my desktop pc from my couch lol.

SatyrSack@quokk.au · 2 pts · 4d

I want to know what games you're playing on your Frame. I know you have one

tiberius@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 3d

Started Sea of Stars and finished Four Last Things.

I am considering if I should work on The Procession to Calvary or Thimbleweed Park. Probably neither and fall back on Jigsaw Puzzle Dreams and 2024 Mosaic Retrospective

zxcv@piefed.social · 2 pts · 3d

Doing a first playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga. I think I'm maybe halfway through the first disc? I don't know, but it's been great so far. I may end up liking it more than Persona 3 and 4.