You probably heard recently that Valve was readying up Steam Deck developer kits and now we can see that quite a lot of developers have received one. Not just the big lot either, developers of all sorts across the world seem to be getting them and showing them off.
The thing is that for it to be a success, you don't just want the top most played games working well - you want as many as possible across every genre that developers have managed to created. Valve is clearly aware of this of course and you can see that in who they've approved for a Steam Deck dev kit.
Here's a a little round-up bundle of developers / publishers that have been showing off their dev kits:
- James Schall of Secret Mode showing shots of Penko Park (they recently added full controller support).
- Sidney Just of X-Plane showing it running, while in an actual aeroplane. Also the official X-Plane account showing a shot of it at the beach.
- Hannah Gamiel of Cyan Worlds showing a couple of videos with games like Myst.
- Chet Faliszek (Ex Valve dev) of StrayBombay with their first title The Anacrusis.
- Dylan Fitterer trying out their classic music game, Audiosurf.
- Sekai Project CEO Christopher Ling mentions needing better controller support for visual novels (plus another).
- LionShield getting ready for Kingdom and Castles.
- Mike Rose from No More Robots does a little extreme sports on the Steam Deck with Descenders.
- Cliff Harris of Positech mentions Democracy 4 works well and also did a video on Production Line.
- Dave Oshry of publisher New Blood has shots of a couple different games.
- It may not be designed for VR but that hasn't stopped people trying too and how about a little Pistol Whip?
We could keep going for a while (there's a lot) but hopefully you found this small slice interesting.
It's getting very exciting to see such a huge push and seeing so many developers genuinely excited about it and impressed. Such a completely different world to the old Steam Machines. Hopefully this really will get developers to pay attention to Linux more, although some are likely to only support the Steam Deck specifically. Our reservation is in the Q1 2022 batch so we have to wait a while.
For those that also somehow missed it both Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye also recently announced support.
The question to you: what will be the first game you play on the Steam Deck when it arrives? It's a question that seems easy but I've been asking it myself and I'm completely lost.
Quoting: ghiumaFallout 4, Outward and Mass effect... Kindoms of Amalur... Metro... The Outer Worlds... Shenmue...ecc ecc...How good is Outward? I ended up getting it for the PS4 so my brother and I could play it co-op, and we got our asses kicked, got captured, broke out, got our asses kicked again, and then put it down for until we could figure out how to not get our asses kicked.
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: ghiumaFallout 4, Outward and Mass effect... Kindoms of Amalur... Metro... The Outer Worlds... Shenmue...ecc ecc...How good is Outward? I ended up getting it for the PS4 so my brother and I could play it co-op, and we got our asses kicked, got captured, broke out, got our asses kicked again, and then put it down for until we could figure out how to not get our asses kicked.
I hate leaving negative reviews, but had to for Outward. My steam review here, quoted below.
QuoteFeels like a game made by devs from the early 2000's, but in a modern game engine. Lots of things you take for granted in modern games are just missing. Key rebinds are there, but you can easily rebind the same key to multiple things accidentally, because there's no warning when you do. Positioning crafted items needs to be pixel-perfect before they highlight. Hotbar customisation is clunky. Fighting is terrible, like you're underwater. Models and animations are... of a low quality. To be kind. And finally, the survival elements are broad, but opaque. Like, after a fight, I had an infection, but no way to see what this meant, it's potential to get worse or how I should treat/cure it. Any game that relies on you to look up a wiki to figure out what's going on has failed in a fairly fundamental way. Sometimes, those games are worth persevering with. This is not such a game.
Lots of potential. The game just doesn't capitalise on it.
Worked well on Linux - I used Pop_OS 20.04 with Proton 5.13. Just hit play and it ran fine.
I got this in the Humble Choice. If I'd paid actual money for this, I'd have refunded it before the 2 hours was up. As it is, I'm not inclined to even reach that mark in the first place.
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