Here's the top Steam Deck games for December 2023

At some point I'll probably try Witcher 3, but my copy was a GOG key that came with my GPU so I'd need to set up Heroic and stuff, and I haven't really been arsed.

In the meantime I'm playing Beyond A Steel Sky on the Deck (and I'll probably play Kona after that if they've fixed the achievements by then) and I'm playing Parkitect on my desktop, so there's no rush.

QuoteWhat have you been playing recently on either Steam Deck or desktop Linux?

Skyrim on Desktop with Steam Link and Steam Controller! Mostly because I had no mindspace for trying out new stuff lately...

I started Divinity: Original Sin 1 but did not have time to play it much past like the first 3 hours.

And I regularly play Fall Guys with friends thanks to the Heroic Games Launcher goodness.

Quoting: CatKillerAt some point I'll probably try Witcher 3, but my copy was a GOG key that came with my GPU so I'd need to set up Heroic and stuff, and I haven't really been arsed. (..) there's no rush.

Setting up Heroic is rather painless ☺️. But yeah this is why we love Steam and the native client!

Still working my way through Diablo IV. Just finished off Yumeutsutsu Re:Master. Killed some holiday time with that one.

QuoteWhat have you been playing recently on either Steam Deck or desktop Linux?

On desktop, Leaf Blower Revolution, Vampire Survivors, Euro Truck Simulator 2, HoloCure, Space Beast Terror Fright, a few adult-only games, Operencia: The Stolen Sun, Ultrakill, and a few games by Kairosoft. On Deck, mostly VS.

Space Beast Terror Fright runs on Deck, but it has UI issues as it's made for 16:9 ratios, and the small screen kinda hampers visibility.

Quoting: CatKillerAt some point I'll probably try Witcher 3, but my copy was a GOG key that came with my GPU so I'd need to set up Heroic and stuff, and I haven't really been arsed

Heroic is completely painless and it mostly just works no problem.

That said, the latest version of W3 is broken on OLED SD (if you have that), as the game detects a HDR screen but SteamOS does not detect the game as running in HDR and it's all very gray and washed-out. Helpfully, HDR can't be disabled in the game.

If you can install the pre-finaldefinitiveedition, or whatever it's called, you should be golden.

DAVE THE DIVER when docked (with the Steam Deck Dock on the TV) and Halls of Torment in Handheld mode, and half-through with Chained Echoes that I sadly didn't touch for a while now. On the desktop lately sunk some hours into Against the Storm. I can recommend all of them.

I have so many games and many of them looked into for some hours but can't get myself to commit myself to going through one of the *big* ones considering how much time you've to put into it and I'd like to enjoy it without disturbance, where are the good ol' days when this was possible? Or is it just a false memory. And often when you're excited for a big new release it's better to wait ~1 year before even touching it to get the final full product, which takes all the excitement out of it. But maybe all of these are just my personal issues and first world problems.

> What have you been playing recently on either Steam Deck or desktop Linux?

On my Debian desktop, I recently finished Tiny Tina's Wonderlands (good enough Borderlands game but not a great one) and now playing through UNCHARTED: Legacy of Thieves Collection (which is decent but I think I prefer Tomb Raider in that genre).

I also played through Strange Horticulture (good indie game) on Amazon Luna through Google Chrome on my desktop while it was free for Prime members in December. With its mostly static graphics, it worked perfectly over the network and, hey, can't beat "free"!

On my Deck I've been going through smaller games one after another! Over the past few weeks/months: Lake, Paradise Killer, Haven Park, Smushi Come Home, Tinykin, Mutazione, Walking Dead & Batman Telltale games, Inside, Shardlight, Unavowed, and many others, all of which I liked. Currently playing through Rakuen and Technobabylon, and I've also tried a whole bunch of games that I started but put aside for now (Monster Sanctuary, Crosscode, Creaks, and others). That's one thing I love about the Deck: the ease with which you can sample games and play the ones that tickle your fancy.

With the Deck docked on the TV, my daughter and I recently coop'ed and finished It Takes Two (great game!) and we're now continuing our neverending Divinity: Original Sin 2 playthough.

Got and played through Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart during the steam sale. It played absolutely perfect on the steam deck and got the platinum achievement that I wasn't able to get on the ps5!

Also picked up Life is Strange True Colors and played through it on my steam deck. It ran fairly well at a mostly solid frame rate. Gonna start on Wavelengths this weekend probably

Quoting: CatKillerAt some point I'll probably try Witcher 3, but my copy was a GOG key that came with my GPU so I'd need to set up Heroic and stuff, and I haven't really been arsed.

If you're using the Steam Deck to play the Witcher 3 from GOG, you could just setup the installer as a Non-Steam Game and after it's done installing, you look for the folder that was created from the installation and update the Target and Start In to point to it. Afterwards, update the artwork from SteamGridDB and you should be good to go if you don't plan on going the Heroic route.

QuoteWhat have you been playing recently on either Steam Deck or desktop Linux?

Since I have too many games in my backlog for the Steam Deck and I only own Baldur's Gate 3 from this list, I'd say I'm playing a lot of Metroidvanias like The Last Faith, Blasphemous 2, Sundered and Ebenezer and the Invisible World. After that, I'll probably look around to see what other games interest me before I continue to add to my backlog.

QuoteWhat have you been playing recently on either Steam Deck or desktop Linux?

I'm now addicted to Brotato (Proton), thanks to recommendations from your articles, Liam, and also from jams3223!

I've been continuing with Chico and the Magic Orchards DX (Native Linux), which is a nice Game Boy Colour-style puzzle game that seems to have flown under everyone's radar. I wrote a little bit about it on the forum the other day, too.

I also discovered an excellent little game called Ekans (Proton), which is an inverse version of Snake where you play as a little guy who's trapped in a snake-pit who has to distract the snake by kicking apples to send him off in a different direction. It's a simple little high-score-based chase game, but that's all that it needs to be, and I love it already. (Hopefully a certain overly-litigious video game company, who has a character named "Ekans" in a part-owned series of theirs, won't go after this one on the basis of having invented spelling names backwards in video games, or something ridiculous of that nature.)

And, of course, there's been plenty of Stardew Valley (Native Linux) and Super Bomberman R 2 (Proton), as well.

QuoteWhat have you been playing recently on either Steam Deck or desktop Linux?

art of rally...... Race 07 and SRX: The Game mostly....... Plus a special unnamed game for the Dick Trickle Career....... If you want to know what it is..... You will have to read the next Weekend Players' Club that will be posted this weekend.......

I've been hocked to Raft, hard. I'm 60 hours in and I just finished what is supposed to be the first chapter (3rd story island), because making my raft big and nice is a bliss for me. It was the same when I played Grounded.

And since my GPU died 1 month ago, I've been using my Deck docked as a desktop using FSR to upscale games from 720 to 1440. Until I get a new GPU, my portable and desktop gaming are fused (and very limited, playing first person games at 40fps-ish with mouse is painful until you get use to it)

Recently finished Disco Elysium, The Gunk, and Stasis: Bone Totem. Played a little bit of F.I.S.T., and Powers in the Basement. Thinking of trying out Midnight Suns, and Alan Wake (like Liam, I've never played, but it's been in the backlog forever).

Disco Elysium - a bit text-heavy and art style is a bit odd, but great storyline.
The Gunk - pretty enjoyable 3D adventure; have to clean up polluted world (with your backpack vacuum!) to save it.
Stasis: Bone Totem - isometric horror adventure game; I've loved everything made by the Bischoff brothers.

F.I.S.T. - a cute platformer game, but I get a little annoyed at challenging jump-this-way-and-that sections.
Powers in the Basement - a free retro-style point-and-click. A little bit *too* retro in the interface.