Edit
Sorry I haven’t replied to anyone, life got a little crazy. I did not expect this many replies on lemmy! Thank you everyone, and I will be checking out a bunch of these! Thank you so much. :) I really appreciate it.
So, I hope this allowed, if not, I’ll remove.
I have a small problem, y’all. I’m a filthy casual, and don’t game often. But right now, due to a lot of very stressful things going on, I’m having trouble sleeping. I’d like a game I can play on the deck for an hour or two at night to get sleepy. Here’s where the hard part comes in:
It’s gotta be cheap (25 or less)
It needs to be not-stressful to play, as in, it works well on the deck, with no fiddling, because I am a dumb and don’t understand things
I don’t actually know what kind of game I want. I don’t care for FPS games, I don’t have the time/patience/money for online multiplayer stuff, and I’m not super in super heavy action games.
I like puzzles, platformers, laid back games. Open world is great. Very small games are fun, but I need something that I can play pretty much every night for a while. I loved portal and the Stanley parable, but I’m burnt out on TSP and I’ve played both portal games several times. I need something with a little more longevity.
Can anyone help with this not at all reasonable request?
Slay the Spire - turn-based deck-building game. Simple, chill, currently $8.49. Works perfectly on the Deck, though I haven’t messed with any Mods so ymmv
Go Home Dinosaurs! - I’ll admit this one is dumb. I got this game as part of a Humble Bundle a while back. It’s a pretty simple tower defense game. Currently $9.99. It’s listed as “Playable”, but I had no issues. My guess is that it’s not fully verified because of the control scheme: I went back-and-forth between using the touch screen vs using the right track pad + triggers as a mouse emulator.
Hades - this game is great. Currently $12.49, fully playable, in the conversation for best game of all time. It is more action-oriented and a bit more intense, but it’s hard not to recommend this.
Banner Saga 1&2 - fantastic art, Steam Deck Verified. A cross between a text-bassd adventure and a turn-based strategy with great art, lore, world building. The 3rd game is showing as Unsupported for some reason: I haven’t gotten around to messing with it yet, but I have no clue why that would be as there aren’t any mechanical changes. These games are a bit pricier at $25 each, but I’m pretty sure they have gone on sale for cheaper before.
The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Classics - there are some good classic 16 bit goodies here. Shining Force is a solid turn-based strategy RPG, similar to Advance Wars or Fire Emblem
There’s also a couple of games that are Verified, but I had issues with. Bug Fables refuses to recognize the Deck controls as a controller. So the official configuration doesn’t work and I had to re-map the buttons to keyboard keys, which really sucks for a quick-time based game. Crypt of the Necrodancer is probably the same issue, I just haven’t gotten around to fixing it.
If you want to get even chiller, you’re in Visual Novel territory. I’d recommend the Phoenix Wright series and Coffee talk as good non-cringe VN’s. If you don’t mind satirical cringe, Sucker for Love is good too.