I recommend getting some indie and pixel art style titles instead of just going for AAA. Reason being many of these are cheaper ($5-10, sometimes even less) so you can try different genres, and these titles also tend to sip battery so you will get lots of gameplay time.
Examples I have enjoyed, in no particular order-
Animal Well
Celeste
Stardew Valley
Vampire Survivors
Caveblazers
Balatro
Slay the Spire
Slay the spire.
This is 500+ hours of gameplay:
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
More interesting Steam Deck Verified games
Also have a look at games that require additional account or launcher:
Not a game recommendation specifically but a money extending protip.
Head over to ITAD and make an account. Then you can get notifications when all the games you’re interested in go on sales from legit resellers (including steam itself). As well as when there’s free games to be had. https://isthereanydeal.com/
Edit: also… if you collect the weekly freebies from epic games you can install heroic games launcher on the steam deck to play those.
I'd heavily reccomend Balatro if you like card games.
Also Portal 2 if you haven't played it, it's a really good puzzle game. Despite it being a sequel, you don't really need the context from Portal 1 to play it through.
You definitely should mention what types of games you like, but I second Stardew Valley, Celeste and Balatro either way. They're great titles.
If you like cozy games like Stardew Valley, I recommend Mystia's Izayaka. You can get the bundle with all the dlcs for cheap right now.
Some other great games I can't recommended enough are Ikenfell, Cult of the Lamb, Later Alligator, Persona 4 and Crow Country.
Also, get an SD card and put Emudeck on it.
Edit: Forgot to mention: you can go on steamdb to get a list of free games that are Deck verified.
For $50 I'd get (afaict current prices):
This totals now $48.18. If you have an additional dollar to spare, I'd also recommend to get something to scratch that retro-gaming itch:
That's now $50.91 in total.
While the Deck is capable of running some big AAA games, I personally find that it shines in the low-power, "chill" games that you can play for a while, put down, and come back to when you've got some more time.
I'm a big fan of RPGs, so my #1 recommendation is Sea of Stars. Dragon Quest: Builders is also good, along with it's sequel, which is arguably better.
A good multiplayer game with endless hordes of monsters vs. your magic is The Spell Brigade.
You may not know this, but the Deck can also be plugged into a TV or monitor, and with the help of a USB-C hub, can support a keyboard and mouse too! If you go that route, then I can't recommend Dyson Sphere Program enough. Ooh! and Timberborn! It's both adorable and beautifully designed.
If you're more of a 3rd-person shooter type, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is fan-fucking-tastic (my favourite series of all time) and it's currently on sale for £5. There are 3 games in the series, and make sure you start with the first one! You don't regret it.
Finally, note that you're not bound to the Steam store if you don't want to be. If you install the Heroic Launcher for example, you can get DRM-Free games from GOG for example. Sometimes you'll find that games are available on both platforms, but cheaper on one of the other, and GOG games don't come with controls on how many people can be playing it at the same time.
Balatro and Slay the Spire both play great on the Deck and have amazing replayability.
If you never played Stardew valley that could be worth it. Hitman is also a good option - the levels are sandboxy and you can spend a lot of time figuring them out.
Vampire survivors is great for the vegetable state of mind play and usually cheap as fuck.
Core keeper is a great builder game,
Valheim
The old final fantasies like 4 5 6 7 9 10 if you can get them on sale. I've had nothing but success on steam key websites.
Mortal sin is amazing.
Slay the spire
Lego Star wars The Skywalker saga is so cheap right now and trust me its so fucking fun
Half life 1 and 2 and half life 2 episodes 1-2
Halo MCC
Portal 1 and 2
Team fortress 2 (probably want a mouse and keyboard for though)
Hogwarts legacy runs surprisingly well on deck too and it's like $6 right now
Make sure you have a game with sustenance and a game you can veg out on.
My retro slanted suggestions:
Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters is one of the greatest games of all time and it’s free. There’s a Steam version, but I think you lose a few of the original music tracks in exchange for easier management. They’re also crowdsourcing a sequel, about 30 years later.
https://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php
I’d also recommend UFO 50. It’s a treasure trove.
Be sure to check out Steam’s own “great on deck” category in the store. Each game will also have an indication from Valve on the quality/playability with regard to the Steam Deck
Hades! It's an incredible game, and especially good on deck.
Titan Fall 2 is one of the greatest shooter ever made, it’s constantly at 8$
Tomb Raider Survival Trilogy for $7.19
Shadow of Mordor/War for $6.99
Prodigal for $1.49 - Zelda plus date sim
Toem for $3.99 - gotta photograph em all
Crosscode for $5.99 - SPMMOOTY
Saint's Row 4 $2.99
Vampire Survivors for $3.74 - everybody is legally required to have a copy
20 Small Mazes for $0 Doronko Wanko $0
My main recommendation is "don't put all of your money into a bunch of PS5 AAA games". PS5-ish games fit "if we turn all of the settings down, and render in 1/4 rez, and then AI upscale, and still your battery only lasts an hour". It often isn't a great experience here.
A strength of the Deck is in delivering an endless back catalog of PS4 and prior styles of games. Another is in bringing forward a ton of indie games that can't win at "marketing", can't afford to develop PS5-level visuals, so they fight like hell on "mixing up new and interesting gameplay" and "price".
First, emulators. Then Demos, so meny Demos/Trials. Hell, on a Deck? Even some Free2Play stuff would be less insufferable than the same on my phone.
... but you need to figure out what you want to spend that money on for yourself. A lot of good stuff is on-sale right now. Check out isthereanydeal.com
Cyberpunk is a great choice in my opinion, especially nowadays where most of the initial shortcomings are fixed and ironed out.
You can get the following games for €50:
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!
Slay the spire for sure
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.
Games I have particularly enjoyed on the deck (that I haven't seen others recommend already) and are relatively cheap: Outer Wilds (not outer worlds), Hardspace Shipbreaker, Enter the Gungeon
Install the PS2 games (or whatever was your first console) of your childhood and bring back old memories. For the PS2 I can especially recommend the OpenGOAL project which let‘s you play Jak & Daxter with modern resolutions. It is basically free if you (like me) still own the games anyway.
dragon age origins, inquisition, veilguard. all on pretty hefty sales right now.
all excellent games. Hades and Hades 2 are also great ones.
Terraria is very cheap and is always a blast as well.
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!
I would probably get:
Kingdom come deliverance really drew me in on the Deck. Currently €6.
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.
Both valheim and project zomboid can be had fire less than $20 each. That leaves some cash left over for a couple dollar games that look interesting.
Both games are amazingly fun and you can get a self hosted server set up for fun with friends... If you have another computer available.
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/
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.
Megabonk, Balatro, or Cyberpunk are my rotation. Hunt those steam sales
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!
Vampire survivors is a couple bucks and worth every penny. I got slay the spire balatro bundle for 13 bucks and would also recommend.
I got a lot of mileage off my SD with Steamworld games, and they are very cheap right now : SteamWorld Essentials
And if you're in the mood for puzzle platformers, the Trine games run beautifully : Trine: Ultimate Collection
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.
Get Rimworld, and write a letter to your friends and family that you wouldn't see them in a while. Consider spending the rest of the money on IV stand so you stay hydrated.
Rimworld is a drug, it should be classified as a controlled substance.
If you’re on a budget, make sure to redeem the weekly free games from Epic and Amazon if you have Prime. You can play them all on your deck via Heroic Games Launcher.
Tactical Breach Wizards!!! Then save the other $40ish for the next sale.
Lies of p, wildermyth, silksong, divinity original sin 2, caves of qud, persona 5 royal, baldurs gate 3
Hades is a great roguelite and is on sale for $9.75CAD right now. If you like that then there's also Hades 2. It has a really cool story built into it which at least at the time was more unique in the genre.
Try to find slightly older games and they'll have steeper discounts.
Doom (2016) or Doom Eternal. Both fantastic games, run on anything and I saw Doom Eternal on sale foe 10%.
Oxygen not included
Factorio
These two will consume your life for so long and they're both on sale :D
Axiom verge and ori bundles are great
Honestly at that price point I'd pick up a few cheap but addictive games like balatro and into the breach
Hades 2 is absolutely amazing as well
If you haven't already got it, Hades
Maybe list games you have enjoyed in the past ? So we can suggest games more tailored to your interests.
If you have another console, there are some ways to stream from them that I think are worth mentioning to pad out what you can do on the go.
In steam there's an app called xbplay, it's a few bucks but it made the process of streaming from an Xbox pretty simple for me, so i found it worth it.
Not in steam, but easy enough to set up (and free) is chiaki-ng, that's for Playstation.
If you have some time for setup and obtaining the games, emudeck is good for playing old games from systems all the way up to Xbox and ps2 (ish). Though i use it for older ones.
If you like those vampire survivor games they all run great on the deck and are usually cheap (vampire survivor, megabonk, brotato, deep rock galactic survivor)
Rocket league
From there, maybe something older you never played, it'll probably be on sale. Maybe dead rising 1 or 2, serious Sam or doom. Speaking of doom, that similar Warhammer 40k game boltgun is 60% off at the moment.
My favorites on the Steam Deck so far are Marvel Cosmic Invasion (arcade style Beat 'em Up) and Deep Rock Galactic Survivor.
I've had great fun with Jedi Fallen Order and Hollow Knight / Silksong
If you must get something from Steam, I'd get something with great time by price ratio, like Terraria, Starbound and Stardew Valley. Or also JRPGs like Final Fantasy XII.
But from your picks, Elden Ring is the one I'd go for, mostly because it's the one that picks my attention the most.
Otherwise, maybe you'd want to follow giveaway communities and alert profiles, e.g. here on the fediverse?
Hollow Knight is great. I chill out with Vampire Survivors a lot.
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