Dome Keeper

There’s already a very long list of excellent suggestions , so I’m going to chip in and add only two others. Tunic and Tinykin. Both are Deck verified and on sale right now.

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 also was gifted a Humble Bundle game for Batman Arkham Knight.

Then perhaps redeem the game and complete the bundle at https://store.steampowered.com/sub/320795/ to play Arkham Asylum first?

I’ve had great fun with Jedi Fallen Order and Hollow Knight / Silksong

Get UFO 50 and get 50 games in one.

I’ve put a disgusting amount of hours into Emberward. It’s Tower Defense but no mtx and has a really fun Tetris blocks gimmck to build lanes.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2459550/Emberward/

Yes it’s early access but it doesn’t matter, the game is nearly done anyways, also on sale currently. There’s good Steam Input profiles for the Deck. Dev is adding controller suppport for 1.0 but this doesn’t really matter on a Steam Deck.

I’ve been replaying Dragon Age Origins at work modded via Nexus Mods and running DAO-Modmanager via WINE under Steam’s compatdata prefix.

Balatro and Slay the Spire both play great on the Deck and have amazing replayability.

Not sure what games you like, but I will suggest Terraria to almost anyone. 50% of currently on steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/Terraria/

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

You’re getting all kinds of recommendations for Steam games. But what about free games? In desktop mode, the “discovery” app let’s you install programs, including games.

There’s tons of free games. I’ll admit a lot of them aren’t the highest quality. They are mostly open source clones of more popular games.

One game I recommend in particular is Super Tux Kart. (Tux is the mascot of Linux, and SteamOS is Linux based.) It’s a kart racer game. It’s one of the highest quality open source clones out there, though. Great graphics too.

If you own Minecraft, the Prism launcher will allow you to run it in the Deck. Just go into the steam menu in desktop mode and click “add non stream game” to add any apps you install this way to your steam menu. Now they can be launched in handheld mode as well!

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Satisfactory sucked up about 3 months of my time and thinking about it as I type this I really want to start a new play through.

So I had a huge backlog of games I never got around to, now I just snatch up games that are 90% off, odds are they will play great on the deck. There are a lot of F2P games that play well.
Path of Exile plays OK, you’re not going to be setting league records but you can casually play.
OpenMW with total overhaul mods probably has the most hours played for me, that game is endless.
Ori and the blind forest and Hollow Knight have been a blast. I just started Silksong and love/hate it.
The entire BioShock series was great, got the whole series on GoG for like $10 a while back.
Primehack is awesome.
Divinity original sin 1 and 2 play great.
Just wait for stuff to go on sale and there’s unlimited fun to be had.

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.