Patient Gamers

If you like the settlement building in Fallout 4, Humble Bundle's got House Flipper 1+DLC on sale for five bucks.

House Flipper and Friends Bundle

Have you played the BioShock series?

Shadows of doubt feels similar to old school Deus Ex. $30 normal price, so wait for a sale.

You run around a dark rainy city as an ex cop turned freelance detective.

Take up small side jobs, break into buildings, make phone calls, buy coffee, listen to jazz in your apartment, read about a murder in the paper, sneak into a bloody crime scene to gather clues, hack computers, make a tangled conspiracy board, drink stolen alcohol until you're staggering down alleys, have crazed monologues, get an epiphany, track down a suspect, accuse them of murder, arrest them, close the case, find out they were innocent after all, repeat

Dark and Darker is free and is basically if Oblivion, Dark Souls and Escape from Tarkov had a baby.

Batman Arkham series runs well.

Maybe kotor? Knights of the old republic.

Absolutely try Prey from 2017, it is an immersive sim that is now looked at as a modern cult-classic. You wont be disappointed.

Just wait for a sale if $30 is too high, it goes on sale regularly.

I've really been enjoying Kingdom Come: Deliverance and swapping between my PC and SteamDeck. It runs pretty well on the Deck. Reminds me of how I felt playing Skyrim. Excited to get to the sequel.

Yakuza zero has been great on the steam deck for me. I think it kinda straddles the line between immersive sim while mostly being a brawler.

The Dishonored series is amazing and is usually pretty cheap when on sale. A couple bucks at most, maybe.

Another immersive sim to recommend would be Prey. The DLC is really good too

If you want a big open world game, I can recommend Mad Max, you can find it in fanatical (a legal and trusted store) for $2.49. I had a lot of fun with it and it will give you tons of hours of fun.

https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/mad-max

I actually recommend you that site for steam keys since they often do bundles very cheap to help your library grow without spending a fortune.

valheim and skyrim

i am a much more relaxed gamer on the deck and oh boy these games have such a satisfying layer to them when just vibing there. spent an hour hiking the mistlands for the vibe last week

valheim is a bit more on the expensive side but skyrim is often for sale at like 10 bux

This fits your price requirement and is a nice chill game to just lose yourself in and perfect for the deck IMO.

A Short Hike. Currently €6.59 in Europe.

Hope things improve for you soon.