I am considering buying a Steam Deck and I was wondering if anyone here has purchased one and could give me their thoughts and impressions.
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Seems like the classical gadget for parser games lovers… ✓.✓
I haven’t played any IF on it (keeping with the theme of this forum) but I’ve had mine since June and I love it! A very versatile device since it’s basically a mini Linux computer with controllers on the sides. I never had a device capable of playing any big PC games, and I love handhelds, so this was the perfect solution for me. It’s a little heavy but you get used to the weight, but I have some issues with stiff joints and that poses a problem if I’m playing for longer than a couple of hours. Other than that, it’s a really great device especially for the price in comparison to other handheld PCs on the market. If you’re willing to do a little tinkering you’ll be able to really push it to its max potential.
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I have one, but I’ve only really used it for testing the Steam releases of Meanwhile and Leviathan. (Which run great!)
Hadean Lands did not run well at all. The device’s soft keyboard could not cope with text input in the Electron framework. Other parser games may or may not have the same problem. (I’m told hooking up an external keyboard works, but at that point you might as well play on a laptop.)
I like the idea of a tablet-shaped device for playing certain PC games. Particularly small puzzle games. (I play plenty of puzzle games on my iPad.) But it turns out that, in practice, I just boot up the desktop PC to play all PC games.
Perhaps if I was away from home more, the Steam Deck would be a better fit.
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Well, I pulled the trigger (pushed the joystick?) and bought myself a 512GB Steam Deck and dock for my birthday. As I start working through my Steam backlog I’ll post my thoughts here.
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Happy birthday! 
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What did you end up playing on it? This thing is amazing and can probably play most IF games. I often forget that I have it as an option but it is so nice to use.
If you know games worth playing on it I’m interested
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From the image, it looks like “IF adjacent stuff” I see The Witness, Inkle’s 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault. (Was Animal Farm a game?)
Another graphic adventure (RPG?) that would probably work on there and has lots of IF cred is Disco Elysium.
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I was very much on the fence with the Steam Deck because it looked way too big and clunky. Basically I already had a Switch Lite and felt like that was right at the upper end of what I’d find comfortable to hold to play games on for any length of time.
But after getting a Deck and actually using it I have to say it’s way more comfortable/usable that I was expecting it to be, and it’s continued to grow on me as a platform the more I’ve used it.
I mostly use it as a handheld emulation machine, for whatever that’s worth.
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I have to agree with @jbg—when I got my Deck I was surprised at how big it was and thought it was too big, but after using it for a week or two I would describe it as hefty but comfortable. It appears to be well made.
@HanonO So far I’ve installed the following games on the Deck (257 GB used; 188GB free). I’ve played* some of these games before but I wanted to see what the experience was when their controls were mapped to the Deck’s configuration.
- 80 Days
- Alien Isolation*
- Another World 20th Anniversary Edition*
- Citizen Sleeper
- Disco Elysium The Final Cut
- Eldritch*
- Elsinore
- Firewatch*
- Half Life 2*
- Heaven’s Vault
- In Other Waters
- Journey
- Kentucky Route Zero
- Left 4 Dead*
- The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
- Leviathan
- Mad Max
- Neo Cab
- Orwell’s Animal Farm
- The Outer Worlds*
- Papers Please
- Prey
- Rusty Lake Hotel
- Rusty Lake: Roots
- Terraforming Mars
- Tharsis
- Trek to Yomi
- Wingspan
- The Witness
So far, the experience with the games in the above list has been pretty fantastic. The power consumption has been good, the screen looks fantastic, and the device doesn’t get too warm. I’m not as good moving/aiming with joysticks as I am with keyboard/mouse but I guess that’s just my generation. Certain games, like The Witness, can take advantage of the Deck’s touch screen, which is nice.
I only experienced two issues with specific games that made me go back to the keyboard and mouse so far:
- The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante - Impossible for me to enter character name with onscreen keyboard
- No Man’s Sky - Couldn’t get out of the spaceship with any joystick/trigger/trackpad combination so went back to keyboard to get past this
I know that I can customize configurations on a game-by-game basis but haven’t dived into this yet.
Speaking of keyboard and mouse, if anyone buys a Deck I recommend that you get the Dock with it as well. The integration is flawless and it really is plug-and-play. I definitely think this combination will replace the old Window 8 machine that I was using to play Windows-only games.
@Liana Regarding interactive fiction, I hadn’t planned on installing any of those games but I might install one or two that I’ve got in my Steam account if they’re compatible to try them out and see what the experience is like.
For those of you who are wondering if your Steam games that you’ve bought are compatible with the Deck, Valve has a Your Games: Steam Deck Compatibility page that lists Verified/Playable/Unsupported games (you have to log in with your Steam account first to see the lists). You can also see the same information on the Deck itself.
There is also a ProtonDB page where you can search for specific games and see if they have been verified, are playable, or are unsupported (looks like Proton is the Linux emulation layer that runs the games).
So far I’m very pleased with the purchase.
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Thanks for the update; I’ve been curious myself.
Other than the stand-up form factor, does the dock get you anything a generic USB-C port extender wouldn’t?
@Zed Don’t know what a generic USB-C port extender gives you but here are the ports on back of the Steam Dock.
