I’m playing two games at the moment:

Yet another run in Nier: Automata, second playthrough, first time on steam deck. It runs surprisingly well.

Stardew valley. For steam deck it’s a killer game - 8-9 hours on a battery, perfect for resting.

I also have Snowrunner and Vampire Survivors as my go to games.

Tunic. Playing it filled me with a sense of wonder and discovery reminiscent of the first time I looked at the map of the original NES Legend of Zelda. Amazing experience. I’m in the final chapter of the game but not finished yet.

Kingdom rush alliance (yes it is out, go play it)

Added 6 more mods to my Stardew Valley. That should be alright. It’s not over 200, luckily.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Motor Town, because I love Motor Town, it just has such good driving feel that it is hard to make a serious argument for another racing/driving game when I can open Motor Town, pick up a taxi passenger and start racing with zero thought or decisions having to be made. It is FANTASTIC as a relaxation and meditation tool, especially since you can either a) just suspend the Steam Deck and come back to your race or b) put the vehicle into autopilot and let it drive itself which fits the mobile, multitasking nature of the Steam Deck experience perfectly.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369670/Motor_Town_Behind_The_Wheel/

I have been playing a lot of new games but one that particularly stood out to me on the steamdeck was the Descent spiritual successor Overload. WOW DOES THIS GAME FEEL GOOD with Steam Deck joysticks and if you mix a bit of gyro aim into it and bam you really can actually see deep into the future potential of the Switch/Steam Deck hardware form. Very very very quickly you can get locked in when using joysticks and gyro in this game and it is just a blast to zip around the environments using a totally new form of control that the original game that inspired it could never have dreamt of.

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/overload/info/

I had a big sailing rant on a sailing thread recently and admittedly some people were taken aback by how hilariously imbalanced my hyperfocus is, but the sailing game that I have kept playing the most and am most interested in following development of is definitely Sailwind which is like a relatively dry space trading open world game if space flight mechanics were actually deep and organic feeling in control.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1764530/Sailwind/

Also, honestly I think a lot of people just look at me weird for this but I play plenty of competitive shooters on the deck with joysticks + gyro and I love it. I used to play Battlebit, but I think the devs really lost their way with game balance. One game I have actually really been liking the realism/fun balance with is Operation Harsh Doorstep which is a free multiplayer realistic moddable shooter on the Unreal engine. It is in the process of adding vehicles and the gun mechanics are really good. More importantly, it feels like the kind of game where being hyper aggressive and rushing can be super powerful (as you can hip shoot an assault rifle accurately enough at close range to make a rush work if you are willing to empty your magazine) but also creeping around, being stealthy and projecting powerful kill angles with scoped weapons also feels similarly powerful. That balance is actually really hard to nail, even in a realistic game where you would think you could just fall back on modelling everything as realistically as possible and just hope the actual in optimal in game tactics end up being similar.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

What I really appreciate About Operation Harsh Doorstop is that movement mechanics feel slick, it doesn’t feel like playing Arma 3 in the slightest, but that weapon handling feels very realistic so long as you pretend you are a super human with impossibly buff arms to hold your scoped long rifle aim steady at a target while standing lol.

You have to turn the settings WAYYY down on Operation Harsh Doorstop and I honestly just limit the frames to like 45 fps, but super realistic body cam shooters are all the rage these days… isn’t this kind of just like a lofi, Steam Deck equivalent? Why go through the process of simulating all the grit and haze, embrace the pixels lol. This game is built on the Unreal Engine and you can tell there is a lot of equipment built into the Unreal Engine particularly focused on making games able to scale down for potato gaming devices like the Steam Deck (as a AAA 3d game engine meant for shooters and action games fundamentally should in my opinion…) .

I will upload bindings for Operation Harsh Doorstep for the Steam Deck at some point, really the only thing I have changed currently is to create a toggle for gyro aim and to bind crouch, prone, and left/right lean buttons to the rear four buttons of the deck but the game deserves some good Steam Deck Bindings because it is genuinely a community project focused on creating lots of new opportunities for other developers and gaming communities to form ontop of the path it forges. It hurt to live through EA abandoning the wonderful wacky world of the Battlefield modding community and I honestly think it set vehicle based multiplayer shooters back a decade but that is a separate rant…

Edit a final fun note about Operation Harsh Doorstep is that the guy at the head of the project is very active on youtube and regularly covers similar games. I don’t know much about this guy, I am not a huge fan of his or anything, but what I can say is that he often gives a lot of air time to cool interesting indie developed shooter fps games, and he is very generous with his compliments to independent developers when he does give them the spotlight.

https://www.youtube.com/@Bluedrake42

I completed Firewatch in a couple of days. Nice game, cozy, if anything a bit too short. Still, perfect for my summer nights.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/

Insanely enough, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. I’m playing with friends and it’s been fun to see many concepts here that were heavily used in the industry later, even though this game is very dated.

I’ve recently finished playing the entire Ratchet and Clank collection… Well… With the exception of the PS3 spinoffs.

But yeah, was surprised the Deck can actually handle PS3 emulation quite well. I was holding off on playing Rift Apart, but when I got Motorstorm running nicely, a game that previously was completely impossible to run decently, I was convinced I could finally go and play all of R&C.

Now I just got to wait till…

*checks notes

… 2029!?!

Uh… Yeah… 2029 for the conclusion of Ratchet and Clank…

Anyway, Rift Apart ran great after some tweaking. The default settings make the game look fugly.

Haven’t seen a post like this recently so I thought I’d start the conversation !

We normally do a “what are you playing” discussion post at the start of each month, so the next one would have been posted in a couple days. This post is taking off though, so I’ll go ahead and feature it and we’ll use it instead for the month of August.

On a side note, we’re always looking for more routine discussion topics if anyone has any suggestions.

The Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Always wanted to play it but never really stuck to it every time I started. It’s awesome on the Deck. Handheld gaming is the best.

A lot of Balatro, lol. I wish it was on mobile, though…

I just modded my Switch, and tomorrow I’m gonna try to get Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom dumped and working on my Deck

so much Elden ring

I picked up Tunic on the summer sale and am finishing that up.

In what way is Eternal Cylinder demanding? Graphics wise or gameplay/control wise?