What's everyone playing? (June)

Blasphemous

Same, I was playing Death Stranding but I paused it because I'm hooked by Blasphemous.

I finally got totk running on Yuzu at a playable setting. But I'm 2/3 of the way through it on my switch lite. So torn on starting fresh on the deck or just finish it on the lite. The screen is so small and crappy compared.

Deck itself just started Hi-fi Rush. Such a cool game.

Oxygen not included

You play ONI on the Steam Deck? Does it work well?
- I play it on Ubuntu with proton and it works perfectly well. It very very rarely crashes.
- I've played that also and it honestly does super well.

Taking a break from hunting achievements in Hollow Knight and starting to get into Horizon Zero Dawn which I bought last Steam sale. The battery sure seemed to last a lot longer while playing Hollow Knight...

Been playing some minecraft java editiom, since the 1.20 update just dropped.

I’ve been playing through Horizon Zero Dawn! Cryotools really helped stabilize the frame rate and I’ve been enjoying the crap out of it. I’m level 40 right now with about 25 hours in.

Dicey Dungeons, Streets of Rogue, Enter The Gungeon (its default controls are kinda weird though); I played Cassette Beasts for about 10 hours but then I got bored.

+1 for Dicey Dungeons. Playing it on the Steam Deck might actually be the ideal format, too. I don't think I could have cleared the Witch campaign at all if I hadn't broken that up into dozens of micro-sessions.

One thing I will lament, however, is the Steam Deck's current poor support for Bluetooth headphones. Being forced to resync headphones constantly forces me to play on mute most of the time, but it's practically a crime against fun to play without the Dicey Dungeons soundtrack.
- I keep dedicated wired headphones for my Nintendo Switch and Steamdeck. As usual bluetooth ones for phones and tablets.
- If you get a pair of bt headphones exclusively for the deck, they seem to stay paired in my experience.
  
  As in, the headphones are only paired to the deck and nothing else.
  
  But yeah, wired is still easier in 2023 :(
I was going to say I remember remapping the blanks to one button in EtG and also moving the map button around, but on SD, the back buttons must be great, since most of my playtime was before I got mine.

I have been playing Alan Wake remastered

Trying to get through all the games in that universe before Alan Wake 2 releases.

Monster Hunter Rise, Underhero, and I just bought Halo MCC for my first ever Halo playthrough.

You're in for a treat. MCC is good fun

Hades, Returnal, and Hi-Fi Rush at the moment.

I think Hades is exactly what the SD was made for.

I was playing Fire Emblem Engage (Lunatic/Classic difficulty), but then I started replaying Disco Elysium and got hooked on that one all over again. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it controls on the Deck -- great way to kill time on the train!

I've been interested in trying Disco Elysium, good to know that it runs well on the Deck! You mentioned playing on the train - is it a good game to play in short bursts?
- Hmm... I'd say you really need at least 20 minutes of time to have a properly satisfying session with Disco Elysium. That's just fine for me because the train frequency in my city (Atlanta) is particularly shit, but results may vary otherwise.
  
  One game I can recommend for play in short bursts is Slay the Spire. Even if you're just sitting down for five mintues, you can usually manage to get something accomplished and ascend a few nodes.
- You can definitely play it in bits if you're able to follow the game log. It keeps track of all the conversations and bits that you need to remember.
  
  There's no action in the game, so there's nothing you can't just put down and pick up later, as long as you can remember what you were in the process of doing or where you were going.

Finished Witcher 3 main quest in Steam Deck (the font is so small on Deck)

Now got consumed by The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Been playing Deep Rock Galactic on the deck. Also finished up RimWorld recently, which actually worked pretty well on the deck.

How's haz 5 with a controller? If I can viably have portable DRG I'm gonna take the dive and splurge on a deck lol
- I usually play DRG with a controller, the controls aren't bad! For the deck, I think it's okay, switching weapons can get a little crazy because of the d-pad placement. The ergonomics can get a little awkward when it gets fast paced because of that. I usually play with a buddy who is way better than I am at DRG, so my answers are probably pretty biased, hah.

I don't have time for longer SD sessions so I only play like once or twice a week now, but halfway through Persona 5 Strikers (with the audio bug on Proton, sadly) and I REALLY want to finish so I can get to NEO: The World Ends With You, ever since I beat the DS original. ...I end up procrastinating work with Youtube instead. Actually, for the past year or two, playing games feels like I'm being productive, comparative to scrolling online.

Diablo 4! I just can’t put it down!

Just got started on My Time at Sandrock after the cozy/family friendly games sales. It runs at a stable 30 FPS so far & I'm enjoying the game. Once SoS:aWL releases later this month, I'll be switching over though.

Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, and No Man's Sky.

How is Car Mechanic on the Deck?
- Works pretty smooth in my opinion. About the only noticeable change I see from desktop is it automatically moves to the next bolt when mounting or unmounting a part. Repairing parts and salvaging scrap is just slightly more difficult in my opinion, but that could just be a 'me' issue coming from keyboard/mouse and not use to controllers.

Into the breach. Such a simple yet perfectly thought out game, which you can easily sink a lot of hours into. It's also cheap.

I just bought it, and am absolutely loving the art style and gameplay. I'm excited to see how the mechanics get more complex as I progress. 1.5 hours in and I'm hooked!

Also, got the recommendation to buy it from the fediverse so that makes it even a bit more sweet!

As someone who has never played Diablo 4, I am enjoying it.

I just started playing Far Cry 6. I also have Hogwarts Legacy and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands ready to go.

🎶 Let the water wash away your sins 🎶

I just started a Terraria play through to play with the mod "starlight river", it's still early but really impressive so far

What's that mod about? Maybe I should play it again
- It adds a lot of stuff that isn't exactly Terraria styled, including boss fights with their own set arenas
  
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984622072
  
  Edit: it's still Alpha, expect bugs also AFAIK nothings post hardmode yet

I've just bought Espresso Tycoon, and it seems like a charming little indie game, so my plan is to play through that when I have the time this weekend.

I mostly use mine when traveling so currently working on God of War II on the PS2 since i finished the first one recently on the Deck. I have Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper queued up for later since I never got around to playing those before.

Edit: For Elden Ring bleed has really helped me on harder enemies. That and finding some good farming spots.

Much appreciated, I'm currently using some big flame sword that I leveled up a lot, but it's just not doing much damage. I'll see if I can get one of my weapons bleed imbued, cheers

Finished up the first Hotline Miami and just started Ape Out. Good with a controller and light power usage.

recently finished Demon’s Souls on ps3 emulator, it’s originally a 30fps game so it ran just fine on steam deck!

Diablo 4 via Xbox remote play. It'll never be as satisfying as playing it natively but the extra battery life is always welcome.

Just got an xbox so going to play a bit of cod

I've been working on Forza 5 Horizons and chilling with some Transport Fever 2. Both run really well.

Haven't tried any local coop games, but gaming via cellular hotspot in a bad signal area seems to be working out fine for games that don't need heavy bandwidth.

I got Humble Choice, so I'll try Ghostwire and Grime.

Ghostwire is unplayably low fps sadly, even at the lowest settings

Diablo 4, Cassette Beasts, Skull, Boneraiser Minions, Skull, Blasphemous, WoW Classic Hardcore.

Most of it on the steam deck. ClassicHC on desktop because of the stakes.

No Man's Sky is my first deck game. Haven't had enough time to get too far, found it tough to slip away long enough to play for decent chunks of time.

new vegas, and a truly dope hockey roguelike (yes, you read that right) called tape to tape

Been playing a lot of Cataclysm:DDA using Proton. It's a pain to get rhe controls set up but at least it's free.

Horizon Zero Dawn. Almost through the main story.

I was having that crash almost every time i put the system to sleep. Are you not experiencing that?
- Sometimes, but definitely not every time

Drakenguard 3 on rpcs3 I'm pretty impressed at how well it runs. I only had to change one audio setting to fix some crackling issues.

Also Pokemon infinite fusion when I'm looking for something more chill

What's drakenguard and what's pokemon infinite? lol I'm out of the loop

edit: I see drakenguard is a Nier predecessor game
- Pokemon infinite is just a fanmade Pokemon game, it's got nothing to do with Nintendo and runs on PC natively. It looks and plays closer to Pokemon leaf green but with new mechanics and story

BotW currently (gotta finish that before TotK), with some breaks for SnowRunner. I need to get back into Elden Ring before I forget how to play!

Magic Arena and a lot of WH40K Space Marine. The latter works pretty good and I noticed the servers are still online! Played some good old exterminate yesterday.

Also Zacharia Pinball in-between.

I've actually really gotten into the emulation scene, so I'm playing through Monster Hunter Freedom Unite and some Pokemon rom hacks rn. Also some Fallout New Vegas.

I'm playing Diablo 4, but not on Deck.

I've been enjoying Diablo 4 on my Deck. Runs great and controls great.

Other than that I've been playing around with emulators to play some classic games I own that are not yet backwards compatible on my Xbox.

How was it getting it set up? I tried getting Hearthstone running several months ago and ran into some problems.
- Pretty easy. You can install any launcher easily with this: https://github.com/moraroy/NonSteamLaunchers-On-Steam-Deck
  
  For Diablo 4 you don't want the high res textures. Put the settings on medium and set the FPS to 45 and you're good to go.
  
  For emulators you can easily install and set them up using https://www.emudeck.com/

Cassette Beasts is really fun but I've mostly caught everything now so I'm running out of motivation to finish, just like I always do with the actual Pokemon games.

A friend made me try Runescape (3, not Old School) a few months back for the first time in my life. Then they quit and left me hooked and alone, so I do a lot of late night grinding on the deck when I'm too tired for a proper game.

Chivalry 2 on the deck has become a comfort food for me too. No thoughts, just run in and get slaughtered vibes, then run in again.

I've been waiting for the time tracking plugin for non-Steam games to reappear as I care too much about statistics. It's taking some time though so I've instead taken a break from videogames instead, as it turns out.

I finished playing through Pokemon Infinite Fusion a couple days ago and just picked up Gunfire Reborn.

I'm currently playing Pokemon Renegade Platinum on Retrodeck.