Two great games that are perfect for Steam Deck - Hades and Hollow Knight.

Portal 1 and 2. The spin off Aperture Desk Job is also an introductory game for the Steam Deck, explaining all the controls.

Apart from that there should be a top games played on Steam Deck somewhere around here.

When you start playing shooters on the Deck try to get comfortable with gyro aiming and maybe flick stick. Many games don’t have aim assist on the PC, so aiming with a stick is harder than on consoles.

Deep Rock Galactic

It’s an FPS, it plays great on the Deck, it supports simultaneous mouse and gamepad (so you can have faster/precise aiming but still use game controls), and it’s tons of fun.

Get Heroic Launcher to add games from GoG, Epic, and Amazon Gaming (make sure to turn off Steam Runtime, Esync, and the anti-cheats in your settings; turn on per each game if you need them).

And keep an eye on !freegamefindings@lemmit.online and !freegames@feddit.uk

PORTAL

Hades

Dead Cells

Halls of Torment

Bloodstained

Vampire Survivor

Backpack Hero

Megaman/megamanx collections(just picked these up from.a humblebundle if they are still available)

Brutal Legends

EmuStation(bit of a setup on this but worth it if you want to emulate things)

Edit: why the ever loving hell cant i do single line? Double enter is dumb

Just a tip: when asking for game recommendations, it usually helps narrow things down if you give some examples of games you’ve already played and enjoyed.

First of all, make a habit of checking IsThereAnyDeal before getting any PC game. There are lots of PC game stores, many selling Steam keys for less than Steam. Or you could get a bundle with some games you like, some you would never think of, for less than the price of 1. Right now I think Fanatical is about the best of the bundlers, Humble sometimes has good stuff too.

You might want to get more of your games on GoG than Steam. It’s a little more work to set up Heroic to handle GoG, but after that it is pretty close to automatic. Once you have a GoG game working, it is never going to say “I know there is an update out there and I refuse to play until you download all 50 ziggabytes of it on your tethering”.

I’m not particularly fond of FPSes, so I can’t help you there. If you haven’t already played Batman Arkham or the new Tomb Raider games on a console, catch up on those? The Humble Mind-Bending Masterpieces bundle is fantastic, being stuck on a couple of puzzles and having them roll around in your mind during dull ship duties could work together. Fanatical’s 3 for $5 BYO Relentless bundle has Red Faction Guerilla, Void Scrappers, Graveyard Keeper or Neverinth?

Fallout New Vegas is awesome, an FPS with RPG elements, that has brilliant humor and huge replayability

Dishonored is a great game where you deal with stealth and magic super powers in a steampunk setting.

The Outer Worlds is a short FPS with RPG elements, it is made by the people who made Fallout New Vegas and is set in a Sci-Fi future in space.

Forza Horizon 4 is a lovely open world racing game set in a fictional UK.

Forza Horizon 5 is the follow up to 4 and is set in Mexico, I find it more boring than 4

Myst (2021), a remake of the classic adventure game from the early 90s, made by the original creator of Myst, Cyan.

OpenRA, play the original Command & Conquer games Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert on modern computers with working online multiplayer for free.

Oh and for games that will just kill your down time (if that’s what you are looking for).

With mouse and Keyboard

• Civilization 5 or 6
• Cities Skylines
• Jurassic World Evolution
• Kerbal Space Program

With just a gamepad

• Elder Scrolls 4/5
• Fallout 3/4/New Vegas (in order)
• GTA San Andreas (though if you can PCSX2 with the widescreen patch)
• Batman Arkham Asylum/City/Knight
• Saints Row 2/3/4
• Watch_Dogs (can’t say how nice UPlay will be with no login)

With multiple controllers (and friends)

• TMNT Shredders Revenge
• Castle Crashers
• LEGO [INSERT FRANCHISE HERE]
• Most ROM bundles like Disney Afternoon, Capcom Arcade Stadium, Sega Genesis Collection etc.

Just tried Severed Steel this week after trying the demo for the studios next game on next fest last week. It’s an incredible movement shooter with a great soundtrack and really satisfying gameplay. Highly recommend. Regularly goes on sale for five dollars and it’s a steel at that price. :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1227690/Severed_Steel/

I like FPS games

HDoom and Gal*Gun series

Yakuza 0 is a great entry point to the series and runs really well on the Steam Deck. I recently finished Dredge and really enjoyed it on the Deck. Lonely Mountain Downhill is a enjoyable skill-based mountain biking game that’s a lot of fun to explore and has a ton of content. Snowrunner is a chill game that works well on the Deck too…it’s kinda like Dark Souls for trucks, but meditative. Hollow Knight is great and looks really good on the OLED screen. Pretty much any of the Fallout games are a good choice; New Vegas is probably the best overall but you’ll need to use Desktop Mode to get some community patches in there while Fallout 4 is not as good story-wise but has better moment-to-moment gameplay feel. Hades is a great run-based roguelike that looks and works great on the Deck. I played the entirety of Jedi Fallen Order on the Steam Deck and it was great. Dead Cells and Scourgebringer are great action roguelikes that feel great to play and run well on the Deck. And while Baldurs Gate 3 is Larian’s latest triumph, it can run into performance issues in the latter half of the game on the Deck; Divinity: Original Sin 2 was their prior game and it runs very well on the Deck and is a great game in its own right.

There’s probably a lot more, but that’s off the top of my head!

I don’t know how much the Navy still resembles my time, but back then if you didn’t want your PSP stolen by some shitbag, you painted it pink. Nobody ever stole pink electronics.

Risk of Rain 2. It’s actually not First person, but Third person shooter. There’s endless content due to the random nature. It’s very difficult in the beginning imo but gets better as you learn the game and how to curate your items a bit

On top of all the great suggestions here I’d like to point out that the deck is a great emulation machine. Everything up to the ps2 era runs flawlessly but it can also do pretty well with Wii u, ps3 and Switch emulation too but performance will vary from title to title.

It’s also a great fallback in case the deck gets unhappy about not having a network connection (YMMV but some people have pretty bad issues with this) and steam games won’t start. Non steam games work just fine regardless of whether or not you have an internet connection.