Kingdom come deliverance really drew me in on the Deck. Currently €6.

A bit dated but definitely worth a look: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/decktop100

Check this out as well: https://store.steampowered.com/charts/steamdecktopplayed/pastyear

Also helpful: https://steam250.com/steam_deck_verified

And finally: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/?min_rating=90&min_reviews=2500&os=steamdeck

Stuff I can recommend for the Deck without the slightest speck of doubt:

• Balatro
• Brotato
• Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
• Vampire Survivors

Be sure to check out Steam’s own “great on deck” category in the store. Each game will also have an indication from Valve on the quality/playability with regard to the Steam Deck

I would look at indie games like nobody saves the world and look for all the emulators and roms I could get my filthy mitts on.

If you don’t have it yet I would spend some of that money on a few months worth at least of mulvad VPN. It would… Open some doors.

Rimworld works weirdly well on the Deck, if that’s at all up your alley. Hades (both I and II) and BALLxPIT are two of my recent faves.

You might check out some of the different game bundles available right now, they can quickly give you a lot of good games to play for cheap.

One month of humble choice ($15) will get you Nine Sols, Like a Dragon Gaiden, Streets of Rage 4, and a bunch of other games.

Fanatical has a ton of build a bundle available right now for their winter sale. Of those bundles, the Prestige, Best of Platinum, Winter SuperStars, and Play on the Go bundles are all especially recommendes.

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CP2077 is a great game! Runs really well on the deck. But so is the Witcher 3 which also runs really well on the deck! Personally cp2077 would be the one I pick.

If you have a little extra money and want to tinker a bit, you can install Decky and the plugins Power Tools, Decky LSFG-VK from decky and Lossless Scaling from the steam store. Decky LSFG-VK needs Lossless Scaling to work and I think it is around 5 bucks. With the above installed you can get around 100 fps in both cp2077, The Witcher 3 and many other games. I haven’t found a game that these plugins dont work on and increase performance and playability albeit at the cost of battery drain.

I hope you many happy hours of gaming on your new deck. I really love mine!

The Winter Sale goes 8 days still, so you have plenty of time. Some games in example from EA and Ubisoft require additional launcher or an account to play them. I usually avoid them.

Steam Deck Verified: 5 games including Cyberpunk for total $47,8

• Cyberpunk: $ 21
• Ace Combat 7: $4.80
• Resident Evil 2: $10
• Subnautica: $8
• Disco Elysium - The Final Cut: $4

More interesting Steam Deck Verified games

• Hollow Knight: $7.50
• Stardew Valley: $9
• Maneater: $4
• Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition: $4

Also have a look at games that require additional account or launcher:

• Red Dead Redemption 2: $ 15 (Steam Deck Playable, Requires 3rd-Party Account: Rockstar Games)
• Halo Master Chief Collection: $10 (Steam Deck Verified, Requires 3rd-Party Account: Xbox Live)

You can get the following games for €50:

• Turbo Overkill
• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
• The Orange Box
• Bioshock
• Bioshock 2
• Exo One
• PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+
• Dishonored
• Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-tered

This list is a good mix of awesome games, currently the total price for this looks like €49,88 in Sweden, this is amazing value!

Turbo Overkill - A fun and fast paced arcade FPS in a dystopic 80s futuristic setting.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy - one of the best platformers I know, amazing soundtrack, super frustrating at times, but soo much fun!

The Orange Box - Needs no introduction, one sale for €3.90, increadible value.

Bioshock snd Bioshock 2 - Absolute gaming classics, and that is for a very good reason.

Exo One - A bit weird sci-fi game, beautiful and very engaging.

PAC-MAN Championship Edition - Take Pacman, Neon colours, fast synth beat, challenges and an online leaderbord, when these combine you get this super fun game.

Dishonored - A great game, a stealth game with magic powers, a classic!

Red Faction Guerilla Re-Mars-Tered edition - Do you like destruction physics? Then this game is for you!

The Messenger is cheap right now and such a good platformer!

Megabonk, Balatro, or Cyberpunk are my rotation. Hunt those steam sales

I would set aside $0.00 of the $50.00 for my free copies of Luanti (Minecraft clone) and Mindustry - Factory building tower defense.

You can buy Mindustry for around $5 on Steam or Itch.io to support the developers, but it is also available for free in the Arch software center (by briefly rebooting the SteamDeck into desktop mode).

In a thread like this a long time ago someone recommended Nail’d Steam page

It’s typically 0.99 and just a silly, fun racer. It’s fun to kill some time on.

The killer app for steam deck for me was emulators. I played through some Zelda games (windwaker, OOT via ship of Harkinian). And some Pokémon. What’s nice is for emulators the battery life feels near infinite, and you can hit the power button for instant sleep. Makes picking up games on down time really easy.

Last recommendation is outer wilds. Played great on the deck and the controls are good.

Does somebody already mentioned Grim Dawn? Diablo II like ARPG. From what I’ve heard well playable on the deck. Check out the mentioned 3rd party sites first a good deal, the all in one (two expansions) set should be around 30ish bucks.