I have horrible news.

Ring works perfectly on Linux. Apparently this game is an absolute wanker on Windows. Here it just glugs along gluggingly.
I’ve actually run into several older games that have major issues on Windows but run great on Deck. Many of these require fan patches to fix their windows issues (stuff like increasing how much ram the game can use, etc).
A recent example was I gave a friend a copy of FEAR, just to discover it ran way worse on his high end PC than it does on my Steam Deck.
- Nuclear Option + Saitek X52 HOTAS + LookPilot
- Factorio
Slowly rebuilding some of my Switch library on Steam (I prefer my Deck) so I picked up both Cattails games on sale (total of ~$9 atm!) and been replaying those. Very sweet, easy games for a quick dose of fun.
Mina the Hollower
Only 3 hours in so far, the combat is a bit challenging already, and I’m still exploring around the starting city.
Finding secret areas is as fun as it was in Shovel Knight, music is great, art is gorgeous, the only complaint so far is how you get stuck with the starting weapon and switching it later requires a lot of money

My answer is a bit cheating, because its emulation of Playstation 1 via RetroArch. The game is Dark Deception 3: Dark Delusion. It looks good, and the soundtrack is phenomenal. The manual is not needed, because the game teaches with tutorials. If you want, have a look at screenshots to get an idea how the game looks. Overall game seem to be okayish in gameplay, but makes up with an unusual game concept and good soundtrack.
The game is an Tactical Action Adventure game, with levels to pass. So its more a linear game with stages. Controls are not great, more like tank controls from third person. The idea is to run around, setup traps and attacks and with one of the buttons “use” them at the right time. The character is basically a witch. Bring up the “map” to set traps for the associated button. I’m quite early on, so not sure if I will ever finish this. If you choose to play this game, be aware that there is no autosave and you have to save manually after each stage.
The Mystery Of The Droods. It runs perfectly, it records perfectly, I can save the game, and I didn’t even have to gut my PC to get it to work. Linux appears to be the ideal environment for the skeletonized remains of ancient Windows games.

Time to harrass Vivec’s well-dressed cousin, then poison a bum and steal his money.
Last month I finished up Transiruby, which is a really fun and breezy Metroidvania. The art style and the incredible chiptune soundtrack gave me big Axiom Verge vibes, despite being quite tonally different.
My June project is getting TotK emulation working satisfactorily, which finally happened last night after far too much trial and error. I know Nintendo’s lawyers have made everyone scared but the amount of vagueposting around this subject is maddening. This means I can likely sell my Switch as it was the only game I had left to play. It also means I have to play the first 10 hours of the game again…
Do you mind sharing your TotK setup? I never finished it because my kids always want the switch, and I find the ergonomics really uncomfortable to play for long
Sure, with the caveat that everyone’s definition of “playable” is different.
I am using the latest Eden AppImage and a 1.4.2 ROM. I didn’t change anything in Eden besides controller setup and increasing the RAM to 8GB (this has to be done in the game config). This gets you fps in the teens and 20s.
Then I ran the NX Optimizer AppImage. I used the Steam Deck preset and chose the 2nd of the 2 TotK entries on the game menu. The only change I made was the lower shadows to 512x. I don’t know if that did anything… the shadows do look pretty bad. Then I clicked “Apply”. Note that if you have multiple emulators, NX is going to try to figure out which one to apply to. I’d get rid of anything that’s not Eden AND the settings folders that are in
~/.local/share.NX adds a “mod” entry you can view and turn on and off in the game settings. It also installs something called UltraCam, and you’ll know that because it changes the game opening and adds UI elements. Now I have no clue what any of this stuff is doing. It’s poorly explained… Like is it just modifying emulator settings you could do yourself? Is it doing something to the ROM? No clue. You can make adjustments to UltraCam settings by hitting both triggers combined with left stick click. I changed resolution to 900p, and turned on FSR. But it’s unclear how much that helped.
Anyway, the result is a max, locked 30 fps. It will dip while shaders are caching and when you first use ultrahand and in villages and other areas with fire. It is not smooth by any means but it’s “mostly smooth”. Usually in the open world and in shrines it’s stable. There’s also some banding from what I assume is anti-aliasing, but I don’t see any turned on in any setting I can locate, so who knows.
Like I said, it’s good enough for me. Like you the ergonomics of the Steam Deck are so much better than Switch that I’ll take the compromise here.
Thanks! I’ll give it a shot one of these days.
Operation Harsh Doorstop multiplayer playtest.
I played in the match in this video!
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=oTEBj3PiB10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEBj3PiB10
OHD is a blast! It is like Battlefield but moddable and not owned by EA or Tencent or some other worthless massive company. Oh yeah it is free, and not in a sketchy way, it is a genuinely community focused game. No microtransactions or any of that crap.
Mostly replaying older games this month. One new pickup is “Return of the Obra Dinn”, which looks pretty interesting. I think it will be (eventually) a fun puzzle to put together, but I’m not sold on the on-boarding process of being pushed from one memory to another. Kinda feels like the game is dictating the pace early on, and I feel like that could have been handled better. But I’ve heard enough good things about it that I expect I’ll enjoy it a lot by the end.
Right now I’m rotating this games:
- Stardew Valley, starting over
- 7 days to end with you, pretty frustrating for me that I’m really bad with puzzles, but so satisfying every time I manage to decipher a word.
- LibrARian
EDIT: LibrARian is one of those games that seems cool for a stream or let’s play.
It speeds up really quickly after the initial friction, they gave you too powerful habilites. Once finished the game there no incentive to play again.





