Here at PC Gamer we still love our high-end desktops with chonky graphics cards, but we find ourselves spending more and more time cozied up on the couch these days with a Steam Deck in hand. It's hard to beat the comfort and convenience of our full Steam libraries available whenever and wherever we want them. And so many of the great games on Steam don't demand a beat of a PC or a keyboard and mouse. There are more than 10,000 games on Steam marked Verified/Playable for the Deck, which is fantastic... but also a little bit terrifying if you're unsure just what you're in the mood for. That's what our picks for the best Steam Deck games are here for.
These aren't just games we love, or games that we love on our desktops but are only okay on the Steam Deck. These are games ideal for play on the Steam Deck that feel born for a gaming handheld. They either run at an easy 60 fps without stressing the Deck's hardware, or belong to genres where we don't mind turning down the settings a bit to hit a stable framerate. In every case they're worth the trade-off of the portability the Deck brings.
Many of these games are ideal in short play sessions, or they're so long that we groan at the idea of sitting at our desks to play them day in and day out. They're all great with gamepad controls, or can be made to play nice with the Deck's extremely customizable paddles and trackpads.
2024 games: Upcoming releases
Best PC games: All-time favorites
Free PC games: Freebie fest
Best FPS games: Finest gunplay
Best MMOs: Massive worlds
Best RPGs: Grand adventures
Given the popularity of the Nintendo Switch, there are dozens of new games every year that play brilliantly on a handheld. And the Deck's extra performance often makes it the ideal platform for those same games.
There are other considerations for our best Steam Deck games picks: How well does a game work on a small screen? Is the install size worth taking up precious space on your SSD or SD card? Do the controls demand the kind of precision we'd normally want a mouse for?
If we recommend an action game for the Steam Deck, that means it can reliably run at 40 - 60 fps, but we're less picky with puzzle games that can sip power at 30 fps without hampering the play experience.
Our selection of the best Steam Deck games is sorted by genre and personally tested on the Steam Deck by the PC Gamer crew. Look out for a star (⭐) next to second-half-of-2024 games and recent additions to the list, which we update every 2-3 months.
Here's what we're playing on the Steam Deck right now, and recommend to anyone getting one of their own in the coming months.
The no-brainer Steam Deck games
Before we get into our more recent recommendations, here are the obvious, all-timer picks that belong on every Steam Deck. Chances are good you already have some or all of them installed, judging by Valve's monthly list of the most-played Deck games.
- Balatro
- Vampire Survivors
- Stardew Valley
- Dead Cells
- Slay the Spire
- Dave the Diver
- Terraria
- FTL & Into the Breach
The best puzzle and adventure Steam Deck games
The Rise of the Golden Idol - 2.5GB ⭐c
Release: 2024 | Developer: Color Gray Games | Our review: 87%
The sequel to one of our GOTY winners from 2022, Rise of the Golden Idol is another great mystery adventure. You'll show up to crime scenes that have something to do with the elusive idol and have to piece apart what happened, with lots of little bits in the environment to click on to discover more details. You'll collect words based on what you see in the scene and use those words to eventually solve the crime—in his review, Chris Livingston calls this process "murderous Mad Libs."
"Collecting words is done by clicking on things but true understanding only comes from close examination of everything in the scene: poring over notes on cork boards and letters in pockets, gathering clues in desk drawers and wastebaskets, scrutinizing the tiniest details like the torn cuff of a sleeve or a splotch of paint. Even fingerprints need to be examined at one point, every detective's dream come true."
Wilmot Works It Out - 450MB ⭐
Release: 2024 | Developer: Hollow Ponds, Richard Hogg
"This chill puzzle game is so good I bought its prequel before I even finished it," writes PC Gamer's Chris Livingston. That's an endorsement! This follow-up to Wilmot's Warehouse is a cute puzzler that Chris particularly called out as a great Steam Deck companion. You're Wilmot, who's literally a square, and you use your square head to assemble the pieces of various jigsaw puzzles with satisfying clicks. Rather than working on a single puzzle at a time, you'll often have pieces that go to multiple puzzles and have to suss out what goes where as you assemble. Simple premise, great execution.
Animal Well - 34MB
Release: 2024 | Developer: Billy Basso | Our review: 90%
We called Animal Well a "sleep-destroying puzzle metroidvania of baffling depth" in our review, praising its eerie atmosphere and clever design that slowly unfolds as you explore. Not only is your arsenal of items particularly unique—you'll find yourself utilizing a slinky and a yo-yo instead of the usual gamey upgrades—there's little combat in Animal Well, making it a notably different sort of adventure than Hollow Knight. But there's so much to find once you've "finished" the game.
As we said in our review: "It's rare for a game that hints towards fathomless depths to so continually reward curious prodding—especially when that game is under 50 megabytes!—but Animal Well, like Fez, Spelunky and Hollow Knight before it, feels like it could be a concern for years to come."
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes - 1.2GB
Release: 2024 | Developer: Simogo | Our review: 89%
"Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is an eclectic, puzzle-filled, haunted-mansion mystery thriller," our 89% review begins, before calling it a contender for 2024's game of the year. Big words, but this indie developer's first game, Sayonara Wild Hearts, was also beloved. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a very different sort of game, but we loved puzzling our way through its haunted hotel, which holds all sorts of secrets and surprises: "The most delightful of these moments were when new puzzles introduced not just new mechanics, but whole new perspectives. The game is filled with 3D puzzle boxes, safes, art installations, and mazes that warp the actual gameplay."
Pentiment - 10GB
Released: 2022 | Developer: Obsidian | Our review: 88%
A gorgeous historical murder mystery set in and around a monastery in early 1500s Bavaria. Pentiment has roots in classic PC adventure games but is built to be completely playable on a controller and Deck verified, so you know it's going to work well here. Your time in Pentiment will be spent interviewing the locals to try to suss out a murder—when you're not losing yourself staring at the stunning fonts, anyway.
The best deckbuilding and strategy Steam Deck games
Thronefall - 760MB ⭐
Released: 2024 | Developer: GrizzlyGames
City builder and tower defense merge in this bite-sized strategy game that's simple to pick up and play. Build up your castle and defenses during the day and then defend them as enemy armies mob the walls at night. But you're not just sitting and watching the action: you're a brave king who can ride into battle alongside your wee little archers and spearmen to fight off the hordes. Survive the night and you can grow your kingdom and improve its production and defenses, but the enemy gets bigger every evening, too. Thronefall is great fun, simple but smart, and perfect for couch-based sessions on your Deck.
Cobalt Core - 500MB
Release: 2023 | Developer: Rocket Rat Games | Our review: 87%
A bit of FTL's ship management with Slay the Spire's superb deckbuilding, Cobalt Core somehow forges its own identity. You'll play cards to affect the positioning your ship and dodge attacks, and the meta progression will see you recruit new cute animal crew members and unlock ships that change how you play. Cobalt Core nails the roguelike essentials to become one of our new favorites, scoring an 87%.
Metal Slug Tactics - 1.55GB ⭐
Released: 2024 | Developer: Leikir Studio | Our review: 76%
How the heck do you adapt a run-and-gun sidescroller into a turn-based strategy game? Well, it worked oddly well with Gears Tactics, and turns out Metal Slug Tactics also adeptly manages the challenge by keeping the fast-paced essence the same, even if you have time to stop and think. "Metal Slug Tactics looks a little bit like Into The Breach," writes reviewer Dominic Tarason," "But the actual meat of the combat is as different as it gets from Into the Breach's desperate precision. Everything here happens in service of running, gunning and generally getting into hugely messy scrums, which is pure Metal Slug." The faster you build your characters, the better they are at dodging incoming fire, encouraging dramatic, risky play to get through the turn-based missions alive.
Tactics Ogre: Reborn - 11.5GB
Released: 2022 | Developer: Square Enix | Our review: 86%
The greatest strategy RPG of all time? Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is definitely in the running, and this 2022 remaster makes some big changes to its base to remove cruft from the corners of the experience. The dramatic, branching politically-driven story is left intact but gains voice acting, and a lot of the unit leveling and theorycrafting has been made less grindy. It's Deck verified, and dense enough to keep you busy until Square finally puts Final Fantasy Tactics on PC (even if that takes years).
The best Steam Deck action games and platformers
UFO 50 - 400MB ⭐
Released: 2024 | Developer: Mossmouth | Our review: 80%
UFO 50 defies genre categorization. It could've really gone anywhere on this page, because this is not a single game but a collection of 50 of them, all designed to replicate the 8-bit era of console gaming. It's got puzzlers, RPGs, first-person adventures, platformers, shmups, and strategy games, with a light but compelling meta narrative linking them together, built around the fictional game company that made them all. You're almost guaranteed to find at least a few games in the collection that grip you. Consider the rest an incredible bonus.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor - 2GB ⭐
Released: 2024 (early access) | Developer: Funday Games
A smash success, this riff on Vampire Survivors adds some of Deep Rock Galactic's mining to the auto-shooter action. You'll complete missions while digging through the dark and melting bugs by the ton. There's a roadmap for future updates to Survivor as it works its way through early access, which should keep it fresh well into 2025.
Hades 2 - 4GB
Released: 2024 | Developer: Supergiant
We are so back.
Back in the underworld, I mean, trying to escape it—this time as princess Melinoë, younger sister of Zagreus. Though Hades 2 is currently in early access, it launched with as much or more stuff in it than Hades had at 1.0, making this an easy recommendation to play right now. It's also different from the first game in some notable ways, including Melinoë's movement style and abilities and some of the weapons at her disposal. Supergiant didn't just make this a purely additive sequel, then, but wanted it to feel distinct from the original to keep things fresh. It's going to take some getting used to if you've put a hundred hours into Hades, but something tells me it'll win over all the skeptics before long.
Pepper Grinder - 150MB
Released: 2024 | Developer: Ahr Ech, MP2 Games | Our review: 80%
What a strong year for high concept platformers, between 3D gems like Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom (no jump button!) and Penny's Big Breakaway (yo-yo moves!) and Pepper Grinder (drill power!) standing out from the 2D field. As we wrote in our review, "Pepper drills through dirt a little faster than you’d like, demanding quick reflexes to move in something close enough to the direction you wanted to go, or at least a route that ideally doesn’t end in certain death. This is all completely by design, of course, and gradually mastering such a joyously unwieldy method of navigation makes for a terrific little platformer."
Pizza Tower - 300MB
Released: 2023 | Developer: Tour De Pizza | Our review: 90%
Pizza Tower is platforming heaven, taking inspiration from Wario Land and 2D Sonic while also boasting a '90s Nickelodeon animation style and a soundtrack that has no right to sound this good. Seriously, bring headphones if you're playing it in public - you'll want to hear every track.
Yakuza 0 - 24GB
Released: 2018 | Developer: Sega | Our review: 90%
Our favorite of the classic Yakuza games and the place anyone experiencing the series for the first time should start. This brawler slash crime drama slash karaoke simulator runs at a verified 60 fps on the Steam Deck, with enough performance overhead to net you hours of battery life. The dream.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - 25GB
Released: 2014 | Developer: Platinum Games | Our review: 80%
Don't tell Bayonetta, but this may be Platinum's finest action game. Given a katana that can cut literally anything in half and a parry system that uses the same button as attacking, and Rising is just nonstop sword swinging, frantic in the best way. It's Deck verified and with some settings tweaks can run at a stable almost-60 fps. For smoother performance, try capping the Deck's refresh rate at 59 fps (which is the framerate Revengeance runs at, for some reason).
The best Steam Deck role playing games
Metaphor: ReFantazio - 80GB ⭐
Released: 2024 | Developer: Atlus | Our review: 95%
The best RPG that Persona studio Atlus has ever made? We say yes: this fantasy blend of Persona's social sim elements with a thoughtful story, strong characters and new layers to combat. "A beautiful, 100-hour-long journey from beginning to end, Metaphor: ReFantazio takes the best elements of Persona 5 and somehow improves on them," we wrote in our review. Dial down the settings to reasonable levels and you can get a consistent 30 fps on the Steam Deck, making it an ideal device to play this loooooong RPG on.
Caves of Qud - 1.2GB ⭐
Released: 2024 | Developer: Freehold Games | Our review: 94%
After a lifetime in early access, Caves of Qud is fully out, and it sets a new high bar for roguelike RPGs with deeply simulated worlds and evocative sci-fi writing. Granted, there's not much—maybe nothing—else out there quite like Qud, but it's a high bar nonetheless! "I cannot recommend Caves of Qud enough for its innovations in mechanics and storytelling, however anachronistic it may look," writer Jon Bolding said in his 94% review. "Caves of Qud is a genre-defining achievement in play, story, and roleplaying freedom."
As part of Qud's big 1.0 launch, it got a revamped interface that's much more controller-friendly than you might expect from a roguelike of its type, with particular attention paid to its playability on Steam Deck. If you want a game you can play for 100 hours without ever stressing the Deck's GPU, it's this one.
Felvidek - 700MB ⭐
Released: 2024 | Developer: Jozef Pavelka, Vlado Ganaj
I think you can learn just about everything you need to know about Felvidek from this write-up from PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield: "Look, I'm aware that the phrase 'indie RPG set in early modern Hungary' sounds almost excruciatingly arch and high-falutin', but for your own sake, don't touch that dial—Felvidek has the juice."
This compact adventure is only about four hours long, features a mix of PS1-esque 3D and '90s PC isometric framing, and pulls from Japanese RPGs despite its European setting. It's a clever, funky, and funny mix, and goes down mightly easily on the Deck.
Diablo 4 - 85GB
Released: 2023 | Developer: Blizzard | Our review: 85%
Diablo 4's arrival on Steam made it a shoe-in as a Steam Deck time-waster, especially as it's Verified on the Deck. We had plenty of criticisms of Diablo 4 at launch, and the game's first season didn't go over well with the community, but season 2 was a welcome reversal, making rare loot drop from the heavens and fixing just about all of our complaints. If you like to spend an hour or two grinding for gear while watching TV, Diablo 4 and the Deck are a good combo.
Sorry about that install size, though.
Disco Elysium - 20GB
Released: 2019 | Developer: ZA/UM | Our review: 92%
Almost entirely voice-acted, this game requires you only to read your responses and some menu stuff, though the text may be a little small for some. Still, the game runs perfectly well without Proton's intervention, and works great with a controller. In fact there's an excuse to play around with the touch screen here as well if you fancy. It's not the smallest install, but it is, you know, the best PC game, period.
The best party/co-op Steam Deck games
Core Keeper - 700MB ⭐
Released: 2024 | Developer: Pugstorm
Core Keeper left early access in August 2024 with a bang, putting the core (heh) ingredients of a survival game into a multiplayer pixel art sandbox. Our resident survival expert Chris Livingston wrote that even in early access, Core Keeper nailed the "dark and dangerous" feel of a procedurally generated world like Valheim, but also "the coziness of a game like Stardew Valley because you can build a home, grow crops on a farm, go fishing, and invite NPCs to chill at your base with you." The big 1.0 release marked the addition of loads of stuff, including biome types, character classes, bosses and animal companions. Multiplayer supports up to eight players in drop-in, drop-out co-op.
Valheim - 1GB
Released: 2021 | Developer: Iron Gate AB | Our review: Unscored
Not only is this a tiny install, considering it's open world, it's also pretty great with a controller, particularly as there are so many options for assigning your hotbar items. We suggest following these steps to make Valheim look spectacular. As long as you're somewhere with a stable internet connection, I wholly recommend joining your friends for some Viking shenanigans.
The best life sims, management sims, and cozy sims on Steam Deck
Fields of Mistria
Released: 2024 (early access) | Developer: NPC Studio
The strongest contender for Stardew Valley's crown in ages, Fields of Mistria brings a charming '90s anime flair to the farm life sim, with an emphasis on dating the cutey pie townsfolk you'll be spending a lot of your time with (though the relationships aren't yet fully formed). This isn't just for the Sailor Moon lovers: even in early access there's a lot of promise in Mistria's atmosphere and farm sim stuff, as demonstrated by its first major update. Even if Stardew or the also-excellent Roots of Pacha own your heart right now, keep an eye on Mistria for the future. It's Deck Verified, too.
Cult of the Lamb - 1GB
Released: 2022 | Developer: Massive Monster | Our review: 82%
Is Cult of the Lamb a sim? An action game? A dungeon crawling roguelike? Uh... yes, to all of the above. Part base builder, part actioner, this cutesy occult game is like "Animal Crossing if Tom Nook craved power instead of money," according to our reviewer. Dungeons provide the action in between building up a society for your newfound worshippers. Outside of some small text, it's a great Deck game, and got a saucy update titled "Sins of the Flesh" in early 2024.
Sports/Driving games
Super Mega Baseball 4 - 16 GB
Released: 2023 | Developer: Metalhead Studios
Really, take your pick from any of the Super Mega Baseball games, because they're all great and perfect for the Deck. The controls are nice and arcadey but there's plenty of depth to the management and player development systems. And since MLB The Show refuses to set foot on PC, it's not like there are a whole lot of other on-field baseball game options.
Art of Rally - 7GB ⭐
Released: 2020 | Developer: Funskeletor Labs
A minimalist yet beautiful racer, Art of Rally is a serene, heavily stylized driving game inspired by classic cars. You race from a top-down perspective instead of the usual rear fender view; Art of Rally is to cars what the also-great Lonely Mountain Downhill is to biking. Perfect your lap times while taking in the scenery: the extremely modest system requirements will keep this one running at full performance without stressing your Deck.
Super Video Golf - 392MB
Released: 2023 | Developer: Trederia
Great to play with friends, against CPU opponents, or alone: Super Video Golf is a '90s themed golf game with loads of courses, modes, and challenges. It's extremely chill, lightweight in terms of size and performance, and there's Steam workshop support for even more customization options than it already has. A great golf game and perfect for your Deck.
Football Manager 2023 - 5GB
Released: 2022 | Developer: Sports Interactive | Our review: 80%
PCG hardware boss Dave James says Football Manager, his one true love, works great on the Deck with no controller or other compatibility issues. Maybe that's why I haven't seen him in a few weeks... It's not a super graphically intensive game, and it fits into the 'not ridiculous' category as far as the file size goes. Why not give it a shot (pun intended)?
