I have a new Steam Deck due to a certain festive event. (Someone asked, and in fairness, I need one for my job now.)
I have now played Rent-a-Vice in its entirety. The main thing I did is set “mouse wheel” on nearly every control where it made sense, and then used touch screen for control otherwise. It works quite well! I’ve generally been comfortable playing on a computer screen but sometimes it isn’t “snug”, so to speak, and phone I’ve always found to be too tiny, but the screen on the Deck is about the right size for reading. I would prefer a slightly faster scroll speed (it might be possible to get that in settings but I don’t think mouse wheel has multiple speeds…will check).
In any case, I’ll try with another game or so soon and maybe make a template that people can download if they get their own Deck. Also, if someone wants me to test another game on Deck lemme know, I’ve also tried a Japanese visual novel (World End Economica, just a straight kinetic novel with no choices) and it worked fine.
Update: point-and-click adventures also work fine. Played Whispers of the Machine, although it required downgrading the version of Proton from 7 (most current) to 6. I’m not clear why. Nobody seems to be writing about what different Proton versions mean anywhere so I’m just having to guess at what works. Another game (old RPGmaker game) I had to go back to something like Proton version 3 for it to work. It definitely takes some fiddling for each new game to get something comfortable.
The Witness worked terrific, though. I need to test some more first person adventures.
Also played another Choice of Games selection (one of their “Hosted” ones though), Fatehaven. Also worked fine, and I notice Steam claims none of the games work on the Deck, for some reason. I guess they need to be certified somehow?
Steam’s “Verified on Steam Deck” process is both opaque and impenetrable to game developers. There’s no way to indicate to Steam that yes, you’ve tested it and it works. You just have to post a forum note and tell your users that way.
There’s a field in the game’s store profile for “link to a forum note describing Steam Deck compatibility.” I think that comes up prominently when you browse the store from Deck, although I can’t remember exactly where it appears. (You can look at my Meanwhile app for an example.)