games

The games my daughter and I have played on the Steam Deck with high levels of success:

Dave the Diver. Planet Coaster. Untitled Goose Game. It Takes Two. Ori series.

It's not exactly commie, but the Borderlands series has a distinctly anti-capitalist undertone. I'd recommend Borderlands 2 if you have any interest in a looter-shooter, it runs great on the steam deck.

West of Loathing and Shadows Over Loathing are quirky adventure games with surprisingly good writing that play well on deck.

Supergiant games: Bastion, Transistor, and Hades. All have good stories and play well. I'd bet Pyre too but I haven't played it.

Other games I think are good on deck but might not fit your criteria (mostly roguelikes of some flavor):

• The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
• Cult of the Lamb
• Rogue Legacy
• Going Under
• Dark Souls I, II, and III

Balatro, Vampire Survivors and Nubby's Number Factory

I just bought haste and have been playing that a bunch.

Kingdom hearts just feels right on the deck because I grew up only playing the PSP and DS games. Now I'm finally able to play the ones originally only released for home consoles

The most impressive story-focused games I got on Steam Deck are

• Wolfenstein 2: New Order

Looks amazing on Steam Deck and runs really well, more story focused FPS though it has a mixed tone, it's $5 for a grey-market steam key from G2A. It's also available through a DODI repack on 1337x.to or Fitgirl

CW: Very dark and very violent despite its mixed tone, does not sanitize Nazi violence against queers and other enemies of fascists, has story sequences from POV of child abuse and forced animal abuse

• Red Dead Redemption 2

One of the best looking games ever and runs well on Steam Deck. Haven't gotten too far into the story yet but it's really good.

• Atom RPG

Steam Deck verified, haven't tried it yet because I want a full week to get really immersed. It's a classic Fallout style game set in the Soviet Union and it's written by communists

• Death Stranding

You play as Norman Reedus doing sci-fi mutual aid to rebuild America through infrastructure by Hideo Kojima

• Metro Exodus

Soviet FPS Fallout with survival horror elements, semi-open zones, story-driven, for train lovers and people that love the post-apocalyptic Soviet setting. You are incentivized to avoid combat when possible. Characters made positive comments about Mao and you are more or less part of a small commune, beautiful communist imagery and natural setting. (Doesn't support Steam Cloud Saves, requires manual backup)

• Fallout New Vegas

It's Fallout New Vegas

• Alan Wake

Third person horror shooter inspired by classics like Twin Peaks and The Shining, made by Remedy, kind of reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other 90s cheese

• Aperture Desk Job

This is the pack-in game for Steam Deck by Valve, but does not come pre-installed, teaches you about Steam Deck controls

• Resident Evil 2 / 3 / Village

The newer Resident Evil games run really well on Steam Deck and have more emphasis on their story and cutscenes

• Cyberpunk 2077

Takes some level of tinkering, low-medium settings with XESS enabled in the game settings to good 40fps performance but looks really impressive on Steam Deck

The themes are a miss but the cinematography and acting in this game is phenomenal

• Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Side scrolling animated adventure, uses some gorgeous and innovative 2d animation systems, lots of eye candy I think it's like a Metroidvania somewhat

• Prey

First person sci-fi immersive sim like classic Deus Ex, haven't tried it but it's a niche classic

• Fallout 1 / 2

Classic Fallout is available and playable, may take some tinkering with setting and controller settings

• LA Noire

You play a 1930s New York Detective solving murders, by Rockstar Games

• Prince of Persia original trilogy

It's kind of like Zelda and the only really good games Ubisoft ever made, first game is like a fairy tale, later ones become more edgy

Fitgirl repacks on https://fitgirl-repacks.site/

DODI repacks on https://1337x.to/

Outer wilds is probably one of the best single player games to come out in a long while. I'd rank it up there with disco elysium

Brigador, Dread Delusion, Citizen Sleeper 1/2

commie game

Have you played Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic? One of the most Marxist games ever made along with Vicky 3. It's pretty intimidating but it has a lot of difficulty features so you can start with just the basics and ramp up at your own pace.

I’d recommend Victoria 3. It’s like Civ but with a much better understanding of how politics work.

I usually just try to go communist revolution for whatever country I’m playing lol

EmuDeck is awesome and I got an sd card and filled it up with games. Was able to get every emulator working that I wanted to use including switch, 3DS, PS2 (Burnout 3 plays great), GC, etc. Also has the capability of adding achievements through the retroachievements site. It's pretty great all around.

Other than that, been playing a ton of Persona 5 Royal which runs great on it. It has a pretty great story so far and the game itself is pretty addicting.

Roguelite card games: Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Wildfrost

FTL faster than light is one of the sites favorite games

The same people that made it made into the breach which is a fun turn based strategy game

There are some fun classics like Shovel Knight and Hollow knight which are fun

Also Katana Zero is really good

No Man's Sky is great on the steam deck, I second 9to5's suggestions of Balatro and Vampire Survivors as well.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion.

Makes a good on-ramp and warmup when getting back into gaming.

If you've never played Celeste, check it out. It's a challenging platformer with a very touching story, cute artwork, and a great soundtrack. Also has a vibrant modding community with thousands of third-party levels, including hundreds gathered together into collabs with consistent difficulty progressions and hours of original soundtrack. Greatest platformer of all time. You should be able to run the mods on a Steam Deck.

Also, look into setting up RetroArch on there (not the version distributed on Steam though - it lacks the function to download emulator 'cores' which you will need to play various games).

Vampire Survivors and Balatro and Halls of Torment if you want to kill all the time.