Three Weeks with the Steam Deck

Owing to Valve’s notoriety and the continued scarcity of hardware products, the Steam Deck has achieved near-mythical status. Slowly, surely, it’s making its way to the people who purchased it more than a year ago in what will probably be the most stressful thirty minutes Steam will ever experience as it struggled to jam pre-orders through billing providers. I received mine almost three weeks ago, and since then I’ve run it through its paces, downloading dozens upon dozens of games, copy and pasting commands blindly into terminals, and trying to get the Steam Deck into a place that I’m happy with, all the while trying to figure out where the device belongs in my own exploration and enjoyment of video games.

This isn’t a full review. There are other places that have done better writeups and produced detailed videos on the Steam Deck. While I’ll go over my overall impressions and what this device has brought to light, I’ll also go over how I’ve set it up and what I’ve tried playing. If you’re more interested in that, skip to the “Games” section. There’s a reason this write-up has a table of contents.

Table of Contents

Eternal Beta

Ultimately, the Steam Deck is unfinished, and will never be finished. This is both a compliment and a critique. Some things can and have been addressed through software updates. Other things will need a hardware revision or two to fix. And new features seem to appear every other week.

Comparisons to the Nintendo Switch are inevitable. Both devices have achieved a sort of impact for their respective audiences that all other future devices are going to be judged by. And while a lot of comparisons are ultimately unjustified because those same audiences are very different, the most fitting comparison is in the approach of the companies behind each device. The Switch is a very Nintendo device. It uses a very well understood and decidedly not cutting edge piece of tech and squeezes the most out of it. The Switch is the result of that company’s ethos going back to the Game and Watch.

Similarly, the Steam Deck is a very Valve device. Part cutting edge, part compromise, and almost all experiment, the Steam Deck has its origins in the Steam Machine endeavor, the Steam Controller, and Proton. A lot of things that have been rolled into the Steam Client over the years are far more visible in the Steam Deck, like the technology behind the Steam Link and, most importantly, Steam Input. The Steam Deck sits where all of these disparate lines converge.

This is Valve’s first standalone computer, and it shows. It’s undoubtedly impressive for what’s been packed into such a small form factor, and the performance monitoring and customization features put everything else to shame. Monitoring CPU core usage, frame times, and having the power to limit frame rates and change refresh rates and CPU power draw is a lot to think about. The staggering part is that SteamOS makes it easy. But on the other hand, so much was so new to Valve that their oversights are hard to ignore.

SteamOS 3 is now built on top of Arch, a Linux distribution notorious for demanding meticulous attention to detail from anyone configuring it. It’s the perfect choice for the Steam Deck, where any sort of bloat incurs a greater cost than on a machine that can simply power through non-ideal configurations. Desktop Mode, which fully reveals the Linux side of things, works just like a desktop. But as a portable, what’s missing is painful. Brightness controls are completely nonexistent in Desktop Mode. Sleep functionality makes sense if the device were a desktop, but in a world of Switches and PlayStations and Xboxes, sleep or suspend should really allow for network traffic to make it through. If you’re downloading a lot of content you need to keep the Steam Deck plugged in and on, and this is also the case in the default Gaming Mode.

On the subject of networks, the Steam Deck has an option to disable wireless network power management, which also comes with a descriptor that doing so might make things more stable on a 5 GHz network. I couldn’t make it through initial setup on a 5 GHz network, long before I had any opportunity to dig into system settings. So I went back as far as I could and connected to a 2.4 GHz network, which is far more stable for reasons I can’t comprehend. It’s baffling that this made it through testing, and that default out of the box option should really be changed to prevent issues. Once setup is complete Cloud Error notifications are commonplace, even though I’ve never had issues syncing saves.

There are many things to nitpick at. Hardware quirks include a surprisingly stiff d-pad that makes diagonal inputs very difficult. The hilariously designed Steam Deck Docking Station uses a cable to plug into the device, but the one USB-C port on the Steam Deck is on top of the device. This makes the “dock” not a proper dock but a stand with an integrated hub.

There’s lag and unresponsiveness when exiting games or closing Steam in Desktop Mode, all related to when Steam Input kicks in. Steam Input occasionally buffers inputs, leading to potential headaches if you’ve set up a lock screen with a PIN. And in the case of Desktop Mode the device will revert to some default and different mappings when the Steam Client is closed. When it’s running, mouse clicks are mapped to pressing down on the touchpads. After closing Steam in Desktop Mode, these clicks are mapped to the triggers.

Proton, the compatibility layer that SteamOS depends on to get Windows games running on its flavor of Linux, is an impressive piece of tech. But it needs to pre-compile shaders, a computationally expensive task. This is alleviated somewhat by Valve apparently constantly compiling shaders for the Steam Deck. These are queued up like any other update, but if you have a lot of games you’re going to be downloading a lot of shaders, and while these downloads tend to be small since they’re effectively “patches” for what’s already on the machine, that download queue can get bewilderingly long.

The Steam Deck is undoubtedly an impressive machine with some impressive software, and there are many things that can still be improved upon, but I’ve been hit with the impression that in another company’s hands this device would have long since died by a thousand cuts. I spent my time on the Beta branch of SteamOS, and Valve is one of the few companies I’d trust with this. They get away with it with a combination of transparency and active work and new features. If something breaks, a fix is never too far away. Still, anyone trying to get away from what I lovingly refer to as “PC Gaming Bullshit” won’t find paradise here.

Users and Use Cases

Who is this device for, then? Admittedly, I’m still wondering if it’s for me. I have no shortage of other ways to play the games I want to play.

PC gaming enthusiasts might be impressed with the Steam Deck’s hardware, but they’ll also contend with the temptation of just firing up a desktop with a GPU sold in the last three years that didn’t get snatched up by crypto miners. Someone wanting a console-like experience with its limitations and ease of use should probably just stick with a console. Proton is impressive, but the pain that Linux gamers have had to deal with for decades hasn’t completely disappeared. Gaming laptops exist for people who don’t want to be as bound to a desk. And anyone into retro gaming will probably have some powerful or powerful enough machine to achieve cycle-accuracy, or have begun to look into FPGA solutions in the form of Analogue’s devices or the excellent Mister project.

That covers a lot of groups in the greater gaming landscape. The Steam Deck does its best to cover as much ground as possible, and it’s easy to see where those attempts fall short. Everything is a compromise. Portability, battery life, and power all tug in opposing directions. The Steam Deck is a Jack of all trades, and it stretches all of these to admirable lengths. But realistically, the people most likely to have bought a Steam Deck are enthusiasts, and enthusiasts are not going to compromise when they don’t have to.

I think the Steam Deck is best for the sort of person who occasionally wants to be away from the desk without compromising too much. Imagine playing Elden Ring on an iPad with on-screen buttons and joysticks. It really isn’t the same, especially not with what that game demands. But the Steam Deck makes it possible to take such a game to a living room where other people might be, socialize with those people, and not give up tactile controls. In a similar vein, the Steam Deck is excellent as a “second screen” for gaming, where something else might be worth paying more attention to in the same environment.

The Steam Deck is also ridiculously well-suited for the retro gaming fan, just not those who have fully committed to upscalers and digital-to-analog converters, nor emulation fans who run with run-ahead enabled and enjoy up-rendering geometry and upscaling textures. The Steam Deck is plenty powerful, but anything more recent than the PS1 invites performance issues. This differs from game to game and emulator to emulator, of course. Gamecube and Wii emulation is in a far, far better state than Saturn emulation will probably ever be. And performance issues, however minor they might be, are easier to stomach in games like Persona 3 than Tekken 5. The Steam Deck is well-placed to carry on the homebrew torch held by Sony and Nintendo’s past handhelds, just without the need for custom firmware and that same handful of homebrew to get things started.

Best on Deck

There’s also the issue of which sorts of games are best on the Steam Deck. I never tried hooking mine up to a monitor. Or tried connecting it with a controller or synced to Bluetooth earbuds. So these thoughts are based solely on the Steam Deck as a singular device, not a piece in a larger setup.

At first I thought smaller games and slower games would be best for the device, along with some slightly faster but not quite Quake-level first person shooters owing to the touchpads, which allow for movements closer to what’s mundane with a mouse. Essentially, I considered what games I enjoyed on the Switch and expanded that pool to include some of those faster-paced games I preferred on a PC.

Unsurprisingly, the best games are those that work with a controller or just a mouse, and on top of that, have UI elements that are very bold and very visible. Surprisingly, there’s a lot of variability in that latter category. I loaded up Subsurface Circular, a game I enjoyed on a monitor, and found it difficult to read on the Steam Deck’s screen. I had also purchased it on the Switch, so I fired it up on that platform, and it was a far more enjoyable experience. The resolution difference between the Steam Deck and the Switch is negligible, with the Steam Deck having 80 additional rows of pixel real estate. The difference was the UI. Subsurface Circular for the Switch was meant for the Switch and had its UI elements redesigned to be readable on such a small display.

Mouse, keyboard, and monitor. This is the de facto interface for PC gaming. This is not the same for consoles, where the display can be as close as a monitor on a desk or as far away as a TV on the other side of a room. So some games that are perfectly playable on the Steam Deck are just not fun on that device. Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Door Kickers 2, and the previously mentioned Subsurface Circular are all slower (and stellar) games that technically work on the Steam Deck, but their UI elements are just too small to be enjoyable. It’s not an issue of resolution, but scaling.

I feel that this is the next frontier for accessibility in games and a relatively easy win. Games are still struggling with key bindings, especially in the console space, but all the major players have system-level alternatives in place. Accessibility for color blindness is a solved problem at this point, and it’s just up to the developers and artists to implement something. Some games, like Forza Horizon 5, have implemented adjustable game speed to help bridge gaps in reflexes. But UI scaling is, for now, largely an afterthought. Ironically, UI scaling first appeared as a solution to the increasingly higher and higher resolutions supported by displays. In the Steam Deck’s case it needs to go the other way for lower resolutions and smaller screens.

My Setup

Desktop Mode doesn’t have any sort of UI scaling either. If it does, I haven’t found it yet. And this side of SteamOS is where you need to be to set things up to really go beyond the whims of Valve’s Deck Verified program.

I have games on other libraries, mainly GOG. And I wanted to set up the Steam Deck for emulation. I’ll go over the broad setup steps for both of these situations.

There are a lot of things to note here in Desktop Mode. First, Dolphin, the file manager, seems to be configured for a touchscreen. This feels especially true in the file select dialog, where it’s too easy to go into a folder and too difficult to just select it. I’ve had the best luck doing right clicks through the left touchpad or trigger to select something and bring up a contextual menu, followed by a left click on some empty space to close that menu while keeping the element selected.

Still on Dolphin, if you’re loading things onto an SD card you’ll need the path to its mounting location. After formatting the card in SteamOS settings in Gaming Mode, going to Desktop Mode, and finally opening Dolphin, you’ll find the SD card mounted as “Primary” on the sidebar. Clicking on this will open its contents as well as change the “short path” near the top of the window. Clicking to the right of “primary” in this short path will bring up the full path, and this value is what you’ll need in some situations. I’m not sure if this changes from device to device. For what it’s worth, mine is /run/media/mmcblk0p1.

There’s also Discover, the package manager used in this flavor of Linux. By far the most important thing to download is Flatseal, which allows you to change the permissions of other apps that are installed through Flatpaks, this flavor of Linux’s “package” equivalent. By default and by design things in SteamOS are heavily restricted so that they can’t touch and affect other things in the file system. Flatseal is mainly used to give apps permission to read and write to other places, like your SD card.

This is a lot, I know. And there’s more. The default terminal for SteamOS is Konsole. It’s available in the System category. And there are a variety of shortcuts to other keys and key combinations that can be seen in Gaming Mode by holding down the Steam button. This cheat sheet is nonexistent in Desktop Mode. Steam + X brings up the onscreen keyboard. It’s the second most important shortcut. The first is Steam + Left on the D-pad. This maps to the Escape key, which is not in the onscreen keyboard.

Non-Steam Games

So with all of that out of the way, other storefronts. I had tried using Heroic (available on Discover) to connect to GOG. It was not great. Lutris, however, I’ve had a lot of success with. And for anyone interested in gaming on Linux, I strongly recommend Lutris since it takes care of a lot of Wine settings and configurations for you. Lutris is available on Discover. However, since it’s still on a beta channel as of this writing, you’ll need to go into the terminal and copy and paste a command to download some of its dependencies. The official instructions are online, and hopefully Lutris will be promoted to the stable channel making this part completely unnecessary.

By default Lutris will try download games to your internal storage. If you want to install them onto your SD card, you’ll need to open up Flatseal, scroll down to the list of folders Lutris is permitted to use, and add the path to the SD card.

But we’re not done yet. You’ll want to add games to Steam so that they’ll show up in the “Non-Steam” category in the Gaming Mode Library. This is done through a right-click context menu on an installed game’s image in Lutris, but it’s important to close Steam before doing this. Otherwise these additions won’t “catch.” Annoyingly, closing Steam will kill inputs for a few seconds as Steam Input gives way to some default and different mappings for the device. Mouse button clicks will move from the touchpads to the triggers.

Adding Lutris as a non-Steam game in the Desktop Mode Steam Client will allow it to be launched from Gaming Mode, but launching games from this Lutris shortcut will not “plug in” a controller. Launching individual games from Gaming Mode will tell games that there is a controller attached and make Steam Input useful.

You’ll know something is configured correctly if the Launch Options deep in the Shortcut properties for a game has lutris:rungameid/{someNumber} as opposed to lutris:rungameid/None.

Emulation

I used Emudeck for emulation, which is really just one really robust script. It autoconfigures a lot for you and downloads the emulators it needs. If you’re familiar with the RetroPie project, this is that for the Steam Deck. Emudeck installs Emulation Station as a thin frontend for Retroarch cores or standalone emulators like PCSX2 for the PS2 and PPSSPP for the PSP. It has its own set of instructions, but getting started is seamless in comparison to setting up Lutris shortcuts.

The exception to this concerns BIOS files. Emulation Station has a few emulators available for each system and typically picks good defaults. Some of these systems require a BIOS file, and sometimes the different emulators available require the same file but expect different names. RetroPie’s documentation has the information you need for these situations.

I did spend a good amount of time scraping metadata and cover art and preview videos for what ended up on the Steam Deck. I won’t go over that here, but once again there are many resources, especially videos, going over the many ways to customize Emulation Station.

I did not try to create shortcuts for individual games to show up in the Gaming Mode Library, instead opting to just launch Emulation Station. There are also instructions available for this if that’s your preference.

Games

Below are nearly all of the games I tried. These were tested while I was on the Beta branch of SteamOS, which left beta recently as version 3.2. I generally used Proton 7.0 but moved to the Experimental version if something couldn’t launch. I prioritized a native resolution while bumping up as many settings as I could, and the Steam Deck tended to power through the vast majority of situations. That said, I turned things down if I couldn’t achieve 60 FPS with a consistent frame time.

Like everything about the Steam Deck, all of this is subject to change. Several of the games below were patched in the time I’ve been writing this already lengthy piece. Compatibility will only improve.

I’ve grouped games by how easy they are to run and how enjoyable they are to experience, first going off of the Deck Verified status of each, then my own experience of playing the game on the device. “Recommended” and “Not Recommended” aren’t indicators of quality but my own experience trying to work with the game. I’ve noted those games not from my Steam library and sometimes some additional thoughts. And I’ve not tried to finish any of these games. Some games are listed as Unsupported but will launch, and some of these may not actually be completable. There’s simply no way for me to verify it on my own.

Some games available on Steam will be listed as Playable or Verified by virtue of having some good default input mappings, either from the developer or the community. The same games outside of Steam do not have this luxury. This doesn’t mean these games can’t or even shouldn’t be played, but just that it’ll involve a lot more work making it enjoyable.

There’s also the odd issue of vsync. There are often situations where a game’s frame rate can be capped in multiple places:

  • In-game vsync
  • In-game frame cap
  • SteamOS frame cap
  • SteamOS refresh rate coupled with in game vsync

Trying to find the most performant settings is made easier with SteamOS’s frame time graph, which will ideally be a consistent horizontal line. I tended to keep vsync off while using a combination of in-game frame caps and SteamOS frame caps. If a game performed significantly better with different settings, I’ve noted it.

And finally, please remember that I played these games in the Steam Deck’s portable form. Your situation will be very different if the Steam Deck is hooked up to a monitor at a desk.

  • Aperture Desk Job
  • Art of Rally (GOG via Lutris)
  • Cuphead (GOG via Lutris)
  • DoDonPachi Resurrection
  • Doom II
    • I played the newer port developed by Nerve, not the original release running in DOSBox. If it’s been a while since you’ve played either Doom or Doom II on Steam, they were updated to additionally include this port.
  • The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
    • I had also tried the GOG version through Lutris. Any non-Steam version will require a healthy amount of input remapping.
  • House of the Dying Sun
  • Jamestown
    • Interestingly, the second version of the game, Jamestown+, is listed as Unsupported.
  • Kentucky Route Zero
  • Mini Metro
  • Mini Motorways
  • Nuclear Throne
  • Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+
  • Rez Infinite
  • Vampire Survivors
  • Slay the Spire
  • Spelunky (GOG via Lutris)
  • Spelunky 2
  • Super Hexagon
  • Thumper
  • World End Economica Episode 01
    • For whatever reason the other games in this series are listed as Unknown. Spoilers: they’re all equally playable and recommended.
  • World of Horror (GOG via Lutris)
    • Maybe owing to the resolution of the Steam Deck’s screen, World of Horror never looks right. It can look good, and it can look sharp, but nothing feels right on the screen. Aspect ratios are either too wide or too thin, judging by elements on the screen that should be squares. To be fair, World of Horror is still in Early Access, and this issue can be solved by playing on a screen with a higher resolution. Play it on a monitor unless you’re OK with the never-quite-right scaling.
  • Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (GOG via Lutris)
    • On the GOG/Lutris configuration the short title card video doesn’t play. Besides that the game runs fine.
  • Crimson Clover World Ignition
    • This game is no longer for sale. Its newer version, Crimson Clover World Explosion, is also listed as Playable. I have no reason to believe this would change anything when it comes to the Steam Deck. World Explosion was originally released on the Switch as a port with additional features before being ported back to Steam.
  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
    • The default community control layout for this game is a labor of love as Morrowind does not have native controller support.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Special Edition
  • LiEat
    • Make sure to map something to the mouse and a mouse click to get through the first screen that selects between different stories.
  • Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight
  • Muse Dash
    • Enable vsync.
  • Mushihimesama
  • Natsuki Chronicles
  • Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth
  • Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol
  • Sid Meier’s Civilization V
    • The UI is borderline uncomfortable on the Steam Deck’s screen.
  • Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
    • The UI is also borderline uncomfortable on the Steam Deck’s screen.
  • Ys: The Oath in Felghana
  • Crying Suns
    • The game has some odd font scaling issues that makes it borderline unreadable and definitely uncomfortable. It’s addressable by playing on something that isn’t the Steam Deck screen.
  • Door Kickers
    • Clumsy but workable with the touchpad, and never felt good as a touchscreen game. Play with a mouse.
  • Door Kickers 2
    • Controls are even worse than its predecessor due to added features and more nuanced mechanics. Definitely play with a mouse.
  • Terraforming Mars
    • The UI is simply too small and dense to be enjoyable on the Steam Deck screen.
  • XCOM 2
    • The game works and can run well in most cases, but was never designed for a controller. Unlike XCOM which was also ported to consoles, XCOM 2 never received back-ported controller support. This is incredibly close to being Recommended. Play with a mouse and keyboard. If playing War of the Chosen, make sure to be quick about selecting that bullet point in the launcher. SteamOS will push past the launcher if you linger on it for several seconds.
  • XCOM: Chimera Squad
    • The game technically works, but never seems to run well, although performance in turn-based games is less of an issue especially if you cap the game at 30 FPS. The real issue is the controls which suffer when you cap that framerate.
  • 10 Minutes Till Dawn
    • Official controller support only moves the cursor. It doesn’t “snap” the cursor like in the vast majority of twin-stick shooters. I recommend just using a touchpad as a mouse in addition to mapping some buttons to R for Reload and RMB for one of the character’s special abilities.
  • Absolute Drift
  • Alltynex Second
    • Takes a little remapping to play but it runs well once it’s configured.
  • Astebreed
  • BallisticNG
  • Blue Revolver
  • Caladrius Blaze (GOG via Lutris)
    • A little painful to configure and at the time required using the Experimental Proton release, but after getting through that first setup it runs perfectly fine.
  • Castle of Shikigami
  • Fault Milestone One
  • Fault Milestone Two
  • Finding Paradise
  • Ginga Force
  • Graze Counter
  • Half Minute Hero: The Second Coming
  • Hellsinker
    • Borders on Not Recommended. UI elements are too small, and the font used is already more about style that readability, but the UI elements also don’t matter as much in this game. If the presentation doesn’t bother you, the game itself plays well.
  • Helltaker
    • Controls could use some mapping, but there really aren’t that many to map to begin with.
  • Jet Car Stunts
    • The right trigger doesn’t work when mapped to accelerate, but the default controller configuration works just fine. There’s significant slowdown when there are a lot of clouds on screen. Amusingly, this game is easier to describe these days with the popularity of Rocket League.
  • Judgment Silversword
  • Kamui
    • Takes some configuration to get the aspect ratio right, but it runs great.
  • Luftrausers
    • Borderline Not Recommended if not for the fact that Luftrausers is an excellent game. The controls are infuriatingly difficult to configure within the game. A community configuration goes a long way, just don’t try to remap controls once you’ve picked it.
  • Memory’s Dogma
  • Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project
    • A mouse is needed to choose between the different stories on the very first screen.
  • The Quest (GOG via Lutris)
    • Will take some rebinding to make comfortable, but between the in-game controls being fully rebindable and Steam Input, this shouldn’t take too long.
  • Raiden IV: Overkill (GOG via Lutris)
  • Rogue Legacy
  • Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies
  • The Silver Case
  • Sky Rogue
  • Slipways (GOG via Lutris)
    • Game plays well, just scale the UI up and remap zoom in and zoom out to something convenient. There are many shortcuts, but all options are available as icons in the UI.
  • Titan Souls
  • To The Moon
  • Touhou Luna Nights
  • TouHou Makuka Sai ~ Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part II
    • Runs well after some control configuration.
  • Unbeatable
    • Enable vsync.
  • VA-11 Hall-A
    • A little awkward as the game doesn’t have controller support, but the touchpad works as a mouse and the game might just work best with the touchscreen.
  • Wanderlust: Transsiberian (GOG via Lutris)
  • World End Economica Episode 02
  • World End Economica Episode 03
  • Ys I
  • Ys II
  • Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim
  • ZeroRanger
  • Machina of the Planet Tree
    • Technically launches and is playable, but unsupported text appears just a few dialog boxes in. I have no idea what this might’ve been since the entire game is in English. Because this is a text-heavy JRPG, I can’t recommend it. I don’t know how much more text might be literally unreadable.
  • Master of Orion 2 (GOG via Lutris)
    • The game doesn’t launch. The game itself runs in DOSBox, so it’s likely the GOG-default configuration that has issues.
  • Raiden III (GOG via Lutris)
    • Could only launch the game in Desktop Mode, and even then only in a small window.
  • Raiden V
    • The intro videos play with incredibly fast flickering. If you’re sensitive to repeating lights, do not launch this game. Seriously, do not try to play this game. If you’ve made it past the potentially seizure-inducing videos, the game can be played, but the frame time graph shows a small band, not a line, and a consistent frame rate is vital for SHMUPs.
  • Sid Meier’s Pirates!
    • FMVs play back with horrible artifacting. The game itself runs well, but there are no good ways to map numpad controls to a controller. There are some solid community configurations, but none of them feel as comfortable as the controller layout on the Xbox version.
  • Songs of Conquest (GOG via Lutris)
    • Technically launches and plays well, but that UI is just shy of being comfortable. The game is still in Early Access, so here’s hoping for some UI scaling to make this easily enjoyable on the Steam Deck’s screen.
  • Subsurface Circular
    • The UI doesn’t lend itself to readability on the Steam Deck. Play on a monitor instead.
  • Where Is My Heart?
    • Technically runs but does not perform well at all.
  • Panzer General 2 (GOG via Lutris)
    • The game launches and the UI is usable enough, if on the small side.
  • Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
    • A little difficult to set up but the game runs find once you do. The main issue is the controls. Civ IV made heavy use of the numpad, but all actions are available through the UI.
  • Space Cadet Pinball (Discover)
    • An open-source implementation of the pinball game that came with Windows XP. If you used Windows XP, you know the one.
  • TouHou Makuka Sai ~ Fantastic Danmaku Festival
    • Runs well after configuring controls. DO NOT select a controller in the launcher. Instead use a community configuration that maps keyboard controls to a PS4 controller.
  • Trails in the Sky
    • This is the most conditional “Recommended” of the games I tried. RPGs are impossible to test for compatibility as one person. The default (DX9) executable runs videos slightly too quickly. This isn’t an issue with the DirectX 8 executable. I had also tried it with the GOG version through Heroic, but without success. I haven’t tried the GOG version through Lutris.
  • Ultimate Doom
    • This is also the newer port by Nerve. I’m not sure why this is listed as Unsupported, as both Ultimate Doom and Doom II are the same package with different WADs.
  • XCOM
    • The game plays well. Not quite sure why it’s Unsupported, but it could be something I haven’t run into in the short time I tried it. Controller support in the later console versions were back-ported to this version.
  • Ys Origin
  • Alpha Centauri (GOG via Lutris)
    • The game doesn’t launch.
  • Grand Theft Auto III
    • Doesn’t launch.
  • Half Minute Hero
    • The game simply doesn’t launch.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (GOG via Lutris with HD Mod)
    • Technically playable, but UI elements are very difficult to parse. Ironically, the HD Mod may have made things more difficult. The HD Edition is available on Steam and listed as Playable.
  • The Marvellous Miss Take
    • The game will launch into a blank screen.
  • Nex Machina
    • The game launches but you cannot make it past the menus.
  • Minecraft (via Discover/PolyMC)
    • The Java version does not have native controller support.

Valve Time

Nearly three weeks in, I’m still not sure if the Steam Deck is for me, and it’s certainly not for lack of trying. For every positive aspect there’s a quirk, and even if all those quirks are patched out, there’s that existential weight that is the Linux gaming experience.

This goes beyond Wine and Proton, and are larger things to mull over by people who like to read and write about gaming more than just enjoying games. Linux is open source. This ethos shows in the games you can find on Discover. And while Valve has made Proton open source, Steam itself is not. Unless Valve makes a similar commitment with how it distributes pre-compiled shaders or someone does it first, gaming on Linux with Proton will always be a lesser experience to Linux with Steam, and something about that just doesn’t feel right.

Still, this device has me thinking about playing games I don’t normally play, visual novels chief among them. There are also all those RPGs in my backlog that are just a little easier to play now that I can take them wherever I want. And it has been fun revisiting older favorites in a new way. So in that sense the Steam Deck has achieved what any gaming-centric device should: make exploring games enjoyable and exciting.

More than any device in recent memory, the Steam Deck is the ultimate “Your Mileage May Vary” machine. It’s the most Valve thing to come out of that company, and it’s easily the first Steam Machine worth seriously considering.