Picked up Yoku’s Island Express during the sale. A unique 2D platformer/exploration game that seamlessly incorporates pinball mechanics. The world feels big with a lot of variety. The pinball stuff is fun and works better than I though it would. Great production. Very happy with the value so far.

Another new one to me is Downwell. This is a neat little game and it’s good at what it does but can’t help feeling that it could have been a lot more if it had more items that combined in fun ways. It was very inexpensive so I am happy with this one too and will keep it in the rotation, especially for short play sessions.

And of course more Isaac, my most played on the deck by far.

Finally picked up the Brotato DLC. Despite the mixed reviews I find it a lot of fun.

I also got Lonestar which is a space themed deck/bag and tableau builder roguelite. Enjoying it a lot so far. Probably won’t have quite as much longevity as the best of the genre but I think it will be good for a few dozen hours.

I also tried Undertale (currently at an all time low of $0.99) and Reventure but I didn’t end up keeping those. They felt too clunky and I guess they are not really my jam.

If I had to sum mine up it’s been Isaac on the Steam Deck and Tabletop Simulator on Linux. And a bunch of other stuff on both.

It’s been mostly Isaac as usual but I picked up Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate yesterday and I like it a lot. It’s a fast-playing roguelite with a neat idea that’s implemented well. The game mechanics remind me of Hoplite on mobile.

The game is currently on sale and has a free demo. It has good controller input and low resource use, a great fit for the Deck.

Backpack Battles. It’s an inventory management based auto-battler. Chill game and I like spatial puzzle a lot.
The game uses the Godot engine and it runs great on the deck. The UI is very smooth and thoughtfully designed.
A neat thing about the battle system is that it’s fully asynchronous. No matchmaking delay and it even works offline. I believe it works by preloading a number of opponent-builds at the beginning of the run.

Picked up Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor a few days ago and I’m now 20 hours in, really enjoying it. It’s a very thematic translation of the original DRG into a survivor game. The terrain and mining are a great addition to the survivor formula, it’s not only for resource collection but it also gives a new twist to the positioning puzzle. The game seems very well suited for more content so I hope that it will keep coming.

Great idea!

I’ll probably stick with Firefox but I will set this up using the Vimium browser extension which has a very similar hint based link selection.

Currently on sale for $17.99, new low.

Finally picked up Dead Cells from the current sale. I play a lot of roguelikes/lites but never been much into Castlevania type stuff so started out skeptical. But a few hours into it I find myself enjoying it more and more. It feels good to get better at it which is a key ingredient for great games.

The game is perfect for the deck, gentle on the battery, works great at the screen resolution, excellent controller support.

Brotato is a perfect game for the Deck and it’s my favorite from the “auto shooter” genre.