The most effective video games on Steam Deck

Because it launched in 2022, the Steam Deck has shortly amassed a status as top-of-the-line, if not the greatest, handheld gaming platforms in the marketplace at the moment— particularly when contemplating the advantages of the OLED model.

With a library of video games spanning a lot of Steam’s huge storefront, a docking station to play video games on TV and screens, and an rising variety of titles being optimized and verified for the Deck every single day, Valve’s proprietary handheld is an ideal instance of the viability and promise of transportable PC gaming. That’s why we’ve collected 26 titles that showcase what makes the Steam Deck so particular.

To curate the checklist, we’ve choose video games that profit probably the most from the Steam Deck’s particular options. You’ll discover PC exclusives, Change video games that profit right here from quicker load occasions, and video games that break aside properly into brief periods.

Don’t count on to see some presumed contenders on the checklist. Not each recreation is suitable with the Steam Deck, neither is each style an ideal match — we’re taking a look at you, RTS video games. And for now, this checklist additionally excludes emulation and cloud streaming.

We deliberately restrict our lists to keep away from overwhelming readers, so be sure you share your private picks that didn’t make the minimize within the feedback.

Our newest replace added Animal Effectively, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and Stardew Valley.

Picture: Billy Basso/Bigmode by way of Polygon

For no less than just a few of the video games on this checklist — like, say, Elden Ring — you’re going to mess with the sport’s settings on Steam Deck with a purpose to be sure you’ve obtained a good body price and the sport feels good to play. Not a priority in any respect for Animal Effectively, a pixel-art masterpiece that feels prefer it may’ve been at residence on the Recreation Boy. With a file measurement of simply 33 MB, it certain received’t take lengthy to put in, both. However Animal Effectively packs fairly a little bit of thriller and time-intensive puzzle-solving into its very small package deal. What begins off as a compelling Metroidvania quickly spirals into an in depth Easter egg hunt with objects hidden behind delightfully esoteric clues. You could as nicely play it on the go, because it’s going to take over your mind for some time and also you’re carrying that round with you already. —Maddy Myers

Picture: Coronary heart Machine

Final weekend, on a whim, I booted up Hyper Mild Drifter on my Steam Deck for the primary time since taking part in it again in 2016. 9 hours later, I lastly managed to wrest myself from the siren-like name of its pixelated tableaus, blistering fight, and melancholic rating, having accomplished it once more and earned the sport’s secret ending. Such is the magnetic enchantment and energy of Coronary heart Machine’s debut even eight years after its launch.

Recreation director Alx Preston and co. got down to create a 16-bit action-RPG that channeled the easiest parts of the Legend of Zelda and Diablo collection, with a narrative not a lot instructed as it’s felt by its dialogue-less cutscenes that play out as in the event that they have been fugue-like visions of some doomed alternate universe. Hyper Mild Drifter achieved all of that and extra, coalescing into an action-RPG that stands the take a look at of time. —Toussaint Egan

Picture: Sega by way of Polygon

The Yakuza collection spans tons of of hours throughout seven mainline entries, together with a handful of spinoffs. Which is to say, the transportable Steam Deck supplies the most effective likelihood at seeing everything of this Japanese gangster epic, particularly within the type of brief missions on lunch breaks. In the event you don’t have time for each recreation, or simply want a spot to start out, we suggest Yakuza 0. A kind of prequel to the collection, the journey takes place in Nineteen Eighties Japan and supplies a lot of colourful backstories. Don’t be fooled by all the violent fight and seedy locales; this collection (and particularly this entry) has extra coronary heart and pleasure than 99% of video games from big-budget publishers. Hero Kazuma Kiryu needs to make the world a greater place, one metropolis block at a time. —Chris Plante

Picture: Large Monster/Devolver Digital by way of Polygon

Deep breath: Cult of the Lamb is Animal Crossing meets Hades meets the darkish aspect of Catholic historical past meets Completely satisfied Tree Pals meets American cultism meets European occultism meets Darkish Souls meets Nineteen Eighties Satanic Panic meets Fractured Fairy Tales meets the waking goals of Peter Molyneux.

Cult of the Lamb is sort of a stew. In the event you look carefully, you may spot all of those scrumptious particular person elements, however when slurped from an enormous spoon all you’ll style is one distinct taste. —CP

Picture: Mintrocket by way of Polygon

There are few cellular gaming experiences as serene and enthralling as Dave the Diver. Dave dives not simply to gather fish and cooking supplies for the sushi restaurant he staffs each evening, however to uncover historical secrets and techniques. No matter your goal, navigating the deep looks like a mix between Animal Crossing and a roguelike, the place you’re amassing higher instruments to uncover what (and who) is lurking within the depths.

Dave the Diver is a family-friendly recreation (in case you can look previous small clouds of blood if you harpoon a fish) that’s startlingly good at mixing many recreation genres in a single. You swim; handle a restaurant; farm fish, veggies and extra; and are solely liable for reversing a local weather change-inducing risk underneath the ocean. And on the Steam Deck, it’s a lot simpler to slot in only one extra dive session. —Cameron Faulkner

Picture: Black Salt Video games/Team17

You may not count on Dredge to really feel at residence on the Steam Deck at first look, nevertheless it completely does. This haunted seafaring journey checks the protagonist’s psyche, and the gameplay loop is ideal for fast pick-up, put-down periods. To not point out, it’s numerous enjoyable being let out to fish, remedy mysteries, and full targets earlier than the solar goes down. And in case you dare, dredge the depths after darkish for some spooky surprises. —CF

Picture: Northway Video games/Finji

Half coming-of-age visible novel, half exploration-heavy sci-fi RPG, half poker-esque card recreation, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a brilliantly fascinating recreation that you just’ll need to play many times (and once more). You tackle the function of a younger child in Earth’s first planetary colony, and observe their life on an odd new alien planet over the course of 10 years. Each exercise you choose impacts your private journey and the relationships you make — and in addition performs an enormous function in the way forward for the planet.

What actually makes I Was a Teenage Exocolonist so compelling is the replayability — ending a playthrough provides you data that you just take by to the following, permitting you to make completely different (and probably higher!) choices. As an illustration, there’s a personality who dies very early on within the first playthrough that may’t be saved in any respect. Their loss of life haunts that first run.

However in the second, it can save you them as a result of you’ve got a hunch as to how issues will go. It’s a recreation that invitations you to play by one other spherical and one other and one other — simply to see if you may get it all proper this time (or make issues go horribly flawed! Or crack the key as to why you’re dwelling these lives over and over!). —Petrana Radulovic

Picture: MNKY/PixelJam by way of Polygon

My love for the Star Fox collection has evaporated with every new entry, to the purpose that I started to marvel if I ever actually loved these video games or if I simply appreciated chunky ’90s 3D graphics. Ex-Zodiac’s creators have achieved what Nintendo couldn’t for the previous couple of a long time: bottle the unique magic of the area flight franchise and add simply sufficient tweaks to make the journey palatable for our collective advanced tastes. (Hey, video video games have come a great distance because the SNES!) Developer MNKY additionally created bonus ranges impressed by different retro classics, like House Harrier, emphasizing its knack for refueling as soon as thrilling genres which have spent manner too lengthy amassing mud within the storage. —CP

Picture: BlueTwelve Studio/Annapurna Interactive

Stray is a recreation about being a cat. You don’t discuss like Garfield or wink on the digicam like Bubsy. You stretch, scratch, and sometimes leap between ledges at perilous heights. Your cat participates in a harrowing journey set in a dystopian, cyberpunk underworld wherein robots echo the lives of their long-dead human counterparts. However most engagement occurs in your behalf by an cute, English-speaking, artificially clever drone named B-12. The sport’s creators hold your cat’s direct involvement ambiguous. Is the cat the savior of a dying planet? Or is the cat only a cat who occurs to be the incidental shepherd of historic change? Like I mentioned, typical cat stuff. —CP

Picture: ConcernedApe

There’s a cause Stardew Valley remains to be so beloved after eight years: It’s simply rattling good. The newest large replace provides a lot to the already strong recreation, fleshing out Pelican City and its inhabitants. It’s not simply farming, however mining, fishing, foraging, and attending to know all of the townspeople (and probably marrying them). Rebuild your little neighborhood and get actually invested in perfecting your farm’s format! Or journey to the deepest, darkest ranges of the mines. Or simply spend a lot of time fishing.

There’s simply so a lot to do in Stardew Valley. It’s clear to see why this recreation revitalized the farming sim style and why each farming sim as of late needs to be identical to it (with a twist). —PR

Picture: Staff Ladybug/WSS playground, PLAYISM by way of Polygon

I’m happy with the work we do at Polygon, however each publication has its weaknesses. I’ve accepted that we’re not the go-to specialists for old-school side-scrolling shooters and shmups. That honor goes to our friends at Eurogamer, particularly Martin Robinson, who I belief extra with this style than I do any pundit with American politics. When he proclaimed Drainus is “probably the most spectacular side-scrolling shooter since Gradius 5,” I needed to give it a attempt. Is it the most effective? I mentioned I’m not an skilled. However I can say, with confidence, it’s been a blast on Steam Deck, a scrumptious digestif after hours in a contemporary open-world recreation, and an unusually accommodating entry level for a notoriously impenetrable style. —CP

Picture: Sq. Enix

Probably the greatest video games of all time obtained top-of-the-line remakes of all time, and now you may play its most full model every time and wherever you need. I imply, I may write extra causes it’s best to play this recreation, however let’s be actual — both you’ve got performed a model of Remaining Fantasy 7 already otherwise you’ve been instructed numerous occasions to bump this one up your queue. Throw this advice on the pile. —CP

Picture: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco by way of Polygon

Meet the Steam Deck’s killer app. It’s not excellent — I play on low settings and sometimes expertise body price dips — however Elden Ring works, and that’s all I have to farm souls (er, “runes”) in FromSoftware’s open-world enlargement of its Darkish Souls system. That is the sport that has stored me awake previous midnight. I promise myself that I’ll cease as soon as I see what’s on the finish of a moss-lined cave or over a burning horizon, however then I see some new curiosity, and all of a sudden, I’m pummeling my manner by one other dungeon. The comfort of a transportable system turns what I meant to be a 15-minute grind session right into a two-hour journey by a labyrinthine dungeon. —CP

Picture: poncle

So that you’ve dropped half a grand on a transportable online game machine able to powering probably the most advanced and costly 3D video video games on the planet. Now put together to burn dozens of hours on a $2.99 2D dungeon crawler that almost performs itself. Vampire Survivors is the unholy union of clickers, roguelikes, and Gauntlet. Runs take 10-Half-hour and pair nicely with an audiobook or podcast. The builders have found the system for an ideal transportable recreation, however in the intervening time, you may’t discover this one on Change or smartphones. —CP

Picture: Don’t Nod

Jusant has been my go-to chill-out recreation of selection this yr, and I can’t think about taking part in it on something aside from the Steam Deck. The post-apocalyptic fantasy climbing recreation from French developer Don’t Nod (Life Is Unusual) has rather a lot going for it: a mysterious and compelling world with stunning artwork design, a transferring orchestral music rating, and tight controls which can be straightforward to study and gratifying to grasp.

It’s that final level that makes the Steam Deck my most well-liked platform of option to play Jusant. The satisfying sound and haptic suggestions of the Deck’s left and proper triggers makes the problem of climbing the cliff faces of the sport’s impossibly huge and looming tower as painless and pleasing as attainable, and the visible and sound high quality of the Deck is terrific at rendering the attractive vistas and ambient soundscapes of the world. In the event you’re searching for a calming but thrilling journey recreation expertise that performs nice on the Steam Deck, that is the one to play. —TE

Picture: Sq. Enix

The most effective place to play Dragon Quest 11 has modified over time. The JRPG to finish all JRPGs first launched in 2018 on Steam and PlayStation 4, solely to be bested a yr later by a Definitive Version for Nintendo Change, which included further content material and may very well be performed on the go. The Definitive Version then got here to Steam in 2020, however, in fact, it lacked the portability of the Change model, forcing gamers to decide on between visuals and comfort. With the Steam Deck, people can now have it each methods. —CP

Picture: PlatinumGames/Sq. Enix

My blurb for Polygon’s greatest video games of the 2010s applies to why Nier: Automata belongs on each Steam Deck:

Nier: Automata is the sport I most frequently discover myself eager to play as an alternative of the numerous fine-but-forgettable shooters and open-world distractions that land on my desk. I give it some thought each week partly as a result of its soundtrack is my favourite writing music, partly as a result of its toys litter my desk, and largely as a result of it’s simply that good. Sure, it’s a must to beat it 5 occasions, however in hindsight, I want I had a cause to play it one other 5 hundred. —CP

Picture: Sq. Enix

Whereas Paranormasight is on the market for Change and iOS, it seems to be and performs greatest (and is commonly probably the most reasonably priced) on Steam Deck, whether or not you’re utilizing it in handheld mode or if it’s docked to your TV. This spooky, moderately mature episodic visible novel is hard to place down, particularly if you start to uncover the way it progresses.

You assume the function of a number of characters, who’re all making an attempt to outlive a supernatural cataclysm that’s out for everybody’s soul. The story is instructed to make you care about every one in every of them, not realizing who’s about to chew the mud on the subsequent flip of occasions. —CF

Picture: Volition, Kaiko/THQ Nordic

In 2009, Volition created an open-world terrorism simulator set on Mars. With a hammer and construction-grade explosives, a bald area bro destroys landmarks, authorities workplace complexes, and mining amenities piece by piece. The place its open-world friends centered on realism and narrative, Pink Faction emphasised chaotic enjoyable. Writer THQ deliberate to transform Pink Faction right into a “transmedia” property, however little materialized past a mediocre sequel and a made-for-TV film. The closest we’ve seen to a non secular sequel is 2020’s Teardown, an indie heist recreation that invitations gamers to bust by buildings manufactured from chunky voxels. Talking of, I ought to set up Teardown on my Steam Deck. —CP

Zero Escape: The Nonary Video games

Picture: Spike Chunsoft Co.

9 Hours, 9 Individuals, 9 Doorways and Zero Escape: Advantage’s Final Reward have been two of probably the most beloved visible novels on the Nintendo DS, 3DS, and PlayStation Vita. Sadly, Nintendo and Sony now not assist the DS and Vita on-line retailers, and the 3DS on-line storefront will shut in 2023. In the meantime, The Nonary Video games, which bundles the 2 titles, stays simply as obtainable at the moment because it did when it launched on Steam in 2017, with no risk of disappearing anytime quickly. —CP

Picture: Mossmouth, Blitworks/Mossmouth

Spelunky HD stored my PlayStation Vita inside arm’s attain lengthy after Sony gave up on the cult handheld. Final yr, developer Mossmouth ported Spelunky and its sequel to the Nintendo Change — and I lastly moved my Vita into its long-term residence in my storage bin of gaming artifacts. I received’t say the Steam Deck is a greater residence for Spelunky than the Change, simply that it’s one other transportable residence. And any transportable that may play Spelunky ought to play Spelunky. —CP

Picture: Worldwalker Video games

Wildermyth made Polygon’s prime 10 video games of 2021 checklist by reimagining the D&D expertise with out the necessity for a part-time Dungeon Grasp. The fight is intelligent sufficient (your magic can convert any object right into a lethal weapon), however I particularly cherish its creator’s dedication to characters. Occasion members discover lovers and nemeses, they purchase weapons and battle scars, they age and ultimately die. Quests are damaged into 10- to 15-minute episodes of story and fight, ideally suited for filling any gaps in your day. The controls on Steam Deck do take slightly follow, however the recreation has benefited from an energetic neighborhood of modders and storytellers, so I wouldn’t be shocked if we see improved user-made management settings quickly. —CP

Picture: Valve by way of Polygon

In 2004, Half-Life 2 helped launch Steam, attracting hundreds of gamers to Valve’s then-unproven online game ecosystem. In return for becoming a member of Steam, gamers may obtain a first-person shooter that was far forward of its time. At present, Half-Life 2 (and its pair of supplemental episodes) works as one other instance of Valve’s magic. I put in a PC recreation I purchased practically 20 years in the past onto a transportable pc, and it solely took a couple of minutes to enter the streets of Metropolis 17. —CP

Picture: Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Leisure

What if Hideo Kojima made his magnum opus, however most individuals wrote it off as a tedious strolling simulator? Reader, it occurred! Demise Stranding is my private recreation of the last decade, an astounding mishmash of every part to look in a Kojima recreation: earnest critiques of capitalism and the ache factors of democracy, eerie premonitions of worldwide pandemics and a gig financial system compelled to hold society on its shoulders, and sufficient mommy points to justify a lifetime of remedy. Plus, the sport itself is enjoyable. Like, very enjoyable!

No, you don’t get to shoot a lot stuff, nor do you conquer the enormous open-world map. However you do make the world slightly extra manageable for you and different gamers, slowly constructing bridges, roads, and ladders that may inevitably be destroyed by nature. The place different video games ask you to develop into the ruler of their world, Demise Stranding reminds you that we’re all merely vacationers awaiting our one-way flight off of this rock. Did I point out the poop grenades?

Loads of people didn’t give the sport a shot on PlayStation 4 or PC. Possibly the Steam Deck will make the sport handy sufficient to win over a handful of curious individuals to make the leap into Demise Stranding’s sticky, inky depths. —CP