Steam Deck

Tunic. Playing it filled me with a sense of wonder and discovery reminiscent of the first time I looked at the map of the original NES Legend of Zelda. Amazing experience. I’m in the final chapter of the game but not finished yet.

Started Baldurs Gate 3 a few months ago and just recently started to get more play time.

I picked up Tunic on the summer sale and am finishing that up.

A lot of Balatro, lol. I wish it was on mobile, though...

I just modded my Switch, and tomorrow I'm gonna try to get Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom dumped and working on my Deck

I'm playing two games at the moment:

Yet another run in Nier: Automata, second playthrough, first time on steam deck. It runs surprisingly well.

Stardew valley. For steam deck it's a killer game - 8-9 hours on a battery, perfect for resting.

I also have Snowrunner and Vampire Survivors as my go to games.

Haven’t seen a post like this recently so I thought I’d start the conversation !

We normally do a "what are you playing" discussion post at the start of each month, so the next one would have been posted in a couple days. This post is taking off though, so I'll go ahead and feature it and we'll use it instead for the month of August.

On a side note, we're always looking for more routine discussion topics if anyone has any suggestions.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Lately I’ve been playing Pseudoregalia. It’s a really good game. It’s a 3D platformer in the style of N64, with super fluid movement.

Mostly just working through my "I should get around to playing this" list. Hades, Dome Keeper, Loop Hero and Whisper Squadron: Survivor.

Pretty much just Zenless Zone Zero and Hades II for the past month or so.

And a bit of Terraria with the boys.

Manor Lords.

Plays really well but as one reviewer put it, it gets old after 20 hours or so.

That said, the early access bit is done well in that the content that is there works pretty well, and you can see placeholder for the other features being worked on.

Like right now it’s maybe like 25% of the full game, but that 25% works well and you can clearly see what’s coming.

New Vegas. At some point I took my save from my PC and copied it over since zi didn't feel like playing as my level 6 new character on hard difficulty survival mode. I'd rather play my melee build character who now has an insanely fast war club that can take out individual death claws without backup with only a 50% chance of death, assuming vats allows me to knock one down.

That, and games like GemCraft: Frostborn Wrath, Isles of Sea and Sky, and trying to get back into Brok the Investigator so I can try and get all endings completed before the eventual DLC release.

Fury of the Furries

I have recently gone to replay Dishonored. It worked great, so now I'm continuing with Dishonored 2, which I had abandoned after like three missions the last time. It's loads of fun although D2 crashes from time to time for me. No big problem with the frequent saving I do anyway.

Mortuary Assistant and the Outer Wilds while I was on a trip without internet access last week. Both played great at heavily restricted TDP.

I’ve been all over the place:

• Warframe
• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Amnesia: Rebirth
• Arkham Knight
• Oblivion (runs amazing with some modding)

Every time I tell myself I'm done with Brotato...it sucks me back in.

Quickly played the storyline of Detroit: Become Human through for the first time, some Dishonored for nostalgia and fell back to playing the PS2 games I never had the console for back when I was a child.

Most of my recent hours have gone to Rayman 3, and there's a big heap of PS2 games to go through after that. I've noticed PCSX2 doesn't consume much battery, so my typical travel games tend to be PS2 games as well.

Predecessor

so much Elden ring

Finished Disco Elysium recently. I enjoyed it despite it not being my typical type of game. The story kept me guessing and at times it was funny. I'm sure there is some replayability there with different specs and choices but I'm not too pushed at the moment as I have other stuff to play.

Next up is the prison dlc for deus ex mankind divided. Finished the main game a while back but heard the dlc was decent.

Chrono Trigger SNES.

It’s on my must play list for this year. RIP Akira Toriyama

The Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Always wanted to play it but never really stuck to it every time I started. It's awesome on the Deck. Handheld gaming is the best.

Dicey Dungeons and Wingspan.

• Pathfinder: WotR
• Armored Core 6
• Elden Ring DLC
• Once Human
• WH40k: Boltgun
• No Man's Sky

I hop and drop games pretty easily hahah

Finally came back to Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery - a sci-fi tactical RPG. Really fun, with interesting story so far. Can be pretty challenging at times (especially on higher difficulties when trying to complete all optional goals on your first try) but that's kind of what you'd want from a title like this, isn't it?

It plays great on both desktop, with mouse and keyboard, as well as on the Deck so I tend to jump between the two depending on the situation. Thankfully game has no problem with that.

Mega Man X, basically finished am just to stupid for Sigma.

Pokemon Unbound, a Romhack for Pokémon Fire Red, probably my favourite Pokémon game. Enemy Trainers are way better than they were in the official games so some fights actually require thinking.

Elden Ring, started a new play through for the dlc, have not entered the new area yet, but my last play through is more than a year past and i've forgotten way more stuff than i thought so even the old areas feel pretty fresh again. and while i still love the game, but damn it fromsoftware quests should be more than bumping into an npc in random locations where they have some cryptic thing to say and then bumping into them again later for more cryptic stuff.

Added 6 more mods to my Stardew Valley. That should be alright. It's not over 200, luckily.

Balatro

Children of Morta

Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2

Mars First Logistics

Right now I'm not playing too much games, just testing them here and there out on an emulator. And have neglected my Steam Deck as a whole too, since I purchased a new Gaming PC. So nothing recent to report playing on Deck. When I do, its mostly emulation; I'm big fan of emulation.

Steam Deck

• Wario Land 3: As a fan of 1 and 2, I never played this one on real hardware and was curious. Its basically like 2. But did not finish it yet (got very far though), maybe I'll pick it up again soon. Didn't play it in a while, just mention it as you remind me. There was a few tricky (in other words frustrating) places, but I overcome most of them. A big design flaw to me is, because you cannot die, they have to design the levels in another way to punish players. And that is often done by falling down and then playing those long segments again. There was one such moment where I had enough and put it away, but planned on playing next week again. Did not workout as planned. :D

PC

• Tears of the Kingdom: Just finished it a few days ago with Yuzu 112 hours playtime (+10 from Ryujinx) in roughly 4 to 5 weeks. 1440p + 60 fps = unstoppable. And that after a few months stop playing Breath of the Wild. So it was basically a back to back experience for me and I'm burned out. Especially because Totk was dragging everything to the extreme and it was a shore at times. The building mechanic is really goddamn cool and its one of the most beautiful games I have played in my entire life, and I mean it in an artistic way how everything looks. But the underworld was just not fun and lot of time was spent there. Overall good game, but BotW was more enjoyable to me. 9/10

Kingdom rush alliance (yes it is out, go play it)

Star Stuff : which is a very cute little programming-puzzle game. Light on the programming - you are heavily boxed into there only being one correct solution.

The Farmer Was Replaced : literally "Python the game".

Veritus : the sequel to Prodigal. It's weaker for lacking the whole adventure side of things, and no waifus 😭.

Arranger : have it as a Netflix Mobile app. Really cute little slider puzzle game, the artwork is gorgeous on an ipad.

That was the game of my childhood too, there's a record of the soundtrack on YouTube I highly recommend for massive nostalgia

Rocket League! It plays at a smooth 90FPS on the OLED Deck which is really nice.

Additionally, some ARPGs - Last Epoch, Diablo 4, and I'm trying out Path of Exile (but we'll see about that one) since I've been really into those as of recently.

I tried The First Descendant on the Steam Deck but unfortunately it seems to be just unstable enough FPS-wise, and for some reason the game completely disconnects you from the servers if your framerate is unstable for too long.