10 best Steam Deck games 2024, from monster-filled medieval combat to space-bending puzzles

A minimalist survival game, Vampire Survivors looks like a reaction-based twin-stick shooter at first glance, but slowly reveals itself to be something more akin to a puzzle game.

Pick your character and battle your way through thousands of pixelated enemies to grab a set of magical items, with abilities that combine and enhance one another, until your character is a death-dispensing demigod, gleefully massacring screens full of baddies.

Fruit-machine-style pinging and dinging sound effects coupled with chaotic on-screen action fosters an addictive gameplay loop that’s impossible to put down once it gets its hooks into you.

FromSoftware’s medieval open-world adventure is infamously difficult to master, demanding split-second reaction times and total mastery of its combat systems to make even an iota of progress in its dark, gothic and monster-ridden universe. It’s punishing enough that most players tend to give up on it, but persevere and you’ll discover one of the most rewarding and richly constructed games ever made.

A highly addictive action RPG roguelike with huge amounts of character, Hades sees you repeatedly attempting to escape the underworld, using an array of weapons, magic and special abilities bestowed by a pantheon of convivial Greek gods.

Each death resets your progress to the start of the game, but leaves you with skill points to spend, so repeated attempts make you stronger and better able to fight your way to the surface. Perfect on Steam Deck, Hades is suited to short play sessions on the sofa.

This 2017 platformer sees you exploring the ruins of a fallen kingdom of strange bug-people – a sprawling and interconnected world made up of ancient cities, overgrown forests and mushroom-infested caves.

Armed with your sword and a growing set of movement abilities, your character grows from a vulnerable weakling to a heroic saviour as you progress. Combat is tight and focused, the environments are beautifully drawn and the haunting and desolate music and sound effects create a sense of place that even big-budget games struggle to achieve.

Ostensibly a farming simulator in the vein of the old Harvest Moon games, Stardew Valley drops you into a living, breathing village of characters, where you’re tasked with restoring the local farm to its former glory.

Over time, the farm itself becomes less of a focus. Instead, you find yourself embraced in the everyday trappings of village life, attending annual events, making friends and forming bizarre relationships with weird old wizards who live in the woods. A bucolic, slow-paced but time-sapping game, Stardew Valley is a perfect fit for the Steam Deck, and a sure-fire hit with fans of games such as The Sims and Animal Crossing.

By day, you’re a scuba diver, repeatedly descending into a tropical lagoon to harpoon increasingly rare and exotic fish. By night, you’re a sushi bar manager, crafting a menu of fishy dishes based on your catch and employing chefs and wait staff to turn over as many tables as you can before the restaurant closes for the night.

Dave the Diver is a simple concept executed brilliantly, and doles out a continuous stream of clever new ideas to keep you hooked. Train up your staff, impress haughty food critics, hunt down the lagoon’s most elusive fish, and uncover a few deep-sea mysteries as you go.

Valve’s space-bending puzzle playground is inarguably one of the best games ever made, and it shines on Steam Deck. The portable PC can comfortably run Portal 2 at smooth frame rates and without chugging on the battery too hard, while the game itself has been optimised to play nicely with the Steam Deck’s control layout.

If you own Valve’s handheld, chances are Portal 2 is already sitting in your Steam library, so there’s no better excuse to jump back into this brilliantly clever and story-rich adventure.

This is an endless space adventure, dropping you into a procedurally generated universe made up of an effectively infinite number of planets and moons to discover and explore, each with their own unique flora and fauna. You can trade your way to riches, take on bounties and missions with friends, hunt down space pirates, survey uncharted solar systems, become the commander of a giant battleship and construct your own elaborate bases on alien worlds. The game was recently optimised for Steam Deck, where it feels right at home – being able to hop back into your space adventure in short bursts is a delight.

Part deck-building strategy card game, part bloody, gothic roguelike, Slay the Spire sees you choosing a champion with unique strengths (determined by the cards in your deck) and attempting to reach the top floor of the titular, enemy-ridden spike. Death pops you back down to ground level to start all over again, but you can keep hold of the cards you discover, to become stronger with each failed attempt, combining abilities to exploit the game’s system and go a little further.

The game’s “just one more go” design is perfect on Steam Deck, letting you tackle a quick run whenever the mood takes you.

A truly original murder mystery game, Pentiment is an engaging whodunit set in a Bavarian monastery in the early 1500s. This is purely a detective story, with none of the usual trappings of conventional video game action – the choices and accusations you make have real and lasting consequences to the story.

There are echoes of the most excellent examples of the genre, think Broken Sword and Monkey Island, as you investigate crimes and interrogate the brilliantly written and beautifully illustrated cast of characters.