Hello peeps. Life’s thrown me some curve-balls recently, and I’d like a bit of an escape. Can anyone recommend a decent game in the vein of Skyrim, Fallout or Deus Ex/System Shock for the steam deck, that isn’t 25 or 30 quid please? Something on offer for less than a tenner would be ideal. I’m sure there are some great older RPGs out there that I’ve missed, the Deck is the first time I’ve got back into gaming for quite a few years, and while I’m sure I could quite happily just play Brotato for the next few years, I reckon there’s something a bit more immersive out there for me to find!
This fits your price requirement and is a nice chill game to just lose yourself in and perfect for the deck IMO.
A Short Hike. Currently €6.59 in Europe.
Hope things improve for you soon.
A Short Hike is a fantastic game.
It sure is and welcome to Lemmy :)
Thank you, it’s pretty tough all round for folks I think at the moment, at least I have the time to use the deck as a bit of escapism.
The Dishonored series is amazing and is usually pretty cheap when on sale. A couple bucks at most, maybe.
Another immersive sim to recommend would be Prey. The DLC is really good too
I would like to second Prey. It is very cheap during a sale.
It’s currently on sale on epic store if you don’t mind that/already have heroic launcher or similar on the steam deck.
The Dishonoured looks great, and I’ve had Prey on my wish list for a while, thanks
My pleasure. Enjoy the escapism and get well soon 💜☺️
+1 for Dishonoured if you haven’t gotten it yet. Especially the first one, one of my all time favourites. Highly recommended
Absolutely try Prey from 2017, it is an immersive sim that is now looked at as a modern cult-classic. You wont be disappointed.
Just wait for a sale if $30 is too high, it goes on sale regularly.
That’s been on my wish list for a bit, good to know that it gets on sale occasionally
There’s still bundle on Fanatical, where you can get Prey and couple more games for like $5.
https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/build-your-own-explosive-bundle
If you want a big open world game, I can recommend Mad Max, you can find it in fanatical (a legal and trusted store) for $2.49. I had a lot of fun with it and it will give you tons of hours of fun.
https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/mad-max
I actually recommend you that site for steam keys since they often do bundles very cheap to help your library grow without spending a fortune.
I’m still fresh to the deck, so I’ve not tried all this steam-key-store business out, but from my quick peruse, that site looks good to know, and mad Max looks right up my street, or outback track as the case may be
You can check out IsThereAnyDeal to compare deals on games
Batman Arkham series runs well.
Maybe kotor? Knights of the old republic.
Oh my god, I didn’t even think to look for KOTOR, what am I doing?! I loved that game! Brilliant, thank you
I played through kotor 1 and 2 recently and experienced a lot of crashes. Eventually made it through, but prepare for some frustration.
That sounds frustrating! I played through on original Xbox and thankfully it was smooth going.
Yakuza zero has been great on the steam deck for me. I think it kinda straddles the line between immersive sim while mostly being a brawler.
“Mark of the ninja” low sysreq sidescrolling stealth game, multiple routes/playstyles. lots of fun, should be cheap too
I love these pixel-art sidescrollers, so I’ll definitely give this a go. One of the first deck games I bought was Expendabros, and I enjoyed it for what it was, and the nostalgia. It actually made me want to play Flashback again, and it just so happens that Flashback is less than a quid this few days, so that’s going to be me for the next few days!
Have you played the BioShock series?
I have, they were pretty good. The fist one properly shat me up the first time I played it!
Cocoon
Nice, same guy who did Inside, which is proving both entertaining and disturbing
I’ve really been enjoying Kingdom Come: Deliverance and swapping between my PC and SteamDeck. It runs pretty well on the Deck. Reminds me of how I felt playing Skyrim. Excited to get to the sequel.
I was very impressed with KCD on my friend’s steam deck. Very smooth for a mobile system
My mate’s been playing this on his switch, and it was a bit janky. Good to know it runs well on the deck
It’s still kinda janky IMO, and there are some parts where the performance can tank. But I’m not really treating as a fast-paced action game so it doesn’t really affect my enjoyment.
Shadows of doubt feels similar to old school Deus Ex. $30 normal price, so wait for a sale.
You run around a dark rainy city as an ex cop turned freelance detective.
Take up small side jobs, break into buildings, make phone calls, buy coffee, listen to jazz in your apartment, read about a murder in the paper, sneak into a bloody crime scene to gather clues, hack computers, make a tangled conspiracy board, drink stolen alcohol until you’re staggering down alleys, have crazed monologues, get an epiphany, track down a suspect, accuse them of murder, arrest them, close the case, find out they were innocent after all, repeat
That sounds mint, thanks
I had the most fun with Vampire Survivors - addictive, relatively short bursts, but suitable for longer sessions. Dirt cheap.
I also liked MultiVersus… before it became a micro-transaction filled abomination. The core gameplay loop is still great tho.
General recommendation: Pick single player games from 3-4 years ago and back. The ones you were really interested in when they came out, but did not yet get around to playing them. Due to their age, they are almost guaranteed to run well on Deck, and they provide hours upon hours of fun. That’s my strategy at least :)
I would recommend against Multiversus only because it’s getting shut down in a couple months. Might be fun until then, though
Based on the games you listed, Morrowind! One of my absolute favorite old RPGs. Out of the elder scrolls games it’s the one with the strongest world building, which paints a nuanced picture of a very strange and compelling world. Compared to Skyrim in particular it’s more like a pen-and-paper rpg and less like an action game which gives it a higher barrier to entry. In particular, a lot of people find the combat frustrating at the start.
The modding community for the game is very active to this day. To begin with, there’s OpenMW which is a re-implementation of the engine that runs natively on Linux and contains various bug fixes and quality of life features. There’s also a fork of it, tes3mp, which allows you to play Morrowind in multiplayer!
There’s also Tamriel Rebuilt which is a modding project that adds the mainland of Morrowind (the base game just takes place on an island called Vvardenfell) and adds maybe another game worth of content. Theres also Project Tamriel which has one project that recreates Skyrim based on Morrowind-era lore and one that recreates Cyrodiil based on Morrowind-era lore.
That’s loads to get into, thanks
Dave the Diver was fantastic and is perfect for the Deck.
Some other games I liked playing this year on the Deck:
Chained Echoes
Vampire Survivors
Eastward
Divinity Original Sin 2
Slay the spire
Balatro
Chrono Trigger
Stardew Valley
Inscryption (mouse and keyboard required)
Edit: I got them all below or around $10, but some of them are curently above.
Have you tried Deus Ex Randomizer? We have an unusually high number of Steam Deck players
