8 great games for your Steam Deck from 2025

I performed a lot of video games on my Steam Deck this yr. It appeared like there was a endless checklist of unbelievable indie video games to strive — The Verge wrote about a lot of them! — and plenty of labored brilliantly on Valve’s handheld gaming PC. Some greater video games made a splash on Steam Deck, too, and whereas they could not look pretty much as good as on a beefy PC, I’m normally blissful to cope with that just because I can play them on the sofa or out of the home.

For those who’re unwrapping a Steam Deck for the vacations this yr, or have some Steam reward playing cards burning a gap in your pocket, listed below are a few of my suggestions of video games launched in 2025 that you just may need to try. (And if you need extra concepts, try my favorites from 2024.)

Ball x Pit blends components from video games like Breakout, Vampire Survivors, and metropolis builders into a delightful, genre-blending roguelike. In the primary a part of the sport, you shoot balls towards an ever-advancing group of enemies, and after selecting up a bunch of gems and upgrades, you’ll finally flip right into a power of nature with balls flying all around the display. After a run, you may construct up a base to enhance your stats and unlock characters — a few of that are fairly intelligent, like one which turns Ball x Pit right into a turn-based recreation. And with runs normally taking lower than quarter-hour or so, it’s an excellent recreation to select up and play in your Steam Deck.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Sandfall Interactive’s debut RPG floored me earlier this yr; it’s an outstanding package with exhilarating turn-based battles, a great parrying system, memorable characters, a gripping story, and music that I nonetheless come again to though I completed the sport months in the past. On Steam Deck, the sport doesn’t look fairly pretty much as good because it does on my PS5, but it surely’s nonetheless playable and was just lately verified for Valve’s handheld PC. People on ProtonDB even have some options to tweak settings to make the visuals higher. If Steam Deck is your solely platform that may play the sport, it’s nonetheless an honest place to expertise The Game Awards’ Game of the Year.

I do know I put Hades II on my model of this checklist final yr, however the roguelike acquired its huge 1.0 replace in September, and it’s damn good. Supergiant Video games builds on the primary Hades with a brand new protagonist, new boons to convey to battle, a bunch of latest characters to provide ambrosia to, two new routes to discover, and one other banger-filled soundtrack. Supergiant even tweaked the ending to make it better. Hades II is Supergiant on the prime of its recreation, and similar to my colleague Ash Parrish stated in 2024, it’s the perfect Steam Deck game.

After years of ready and lots of clown makeup, Hole Knight’s sequel lastly launched in September, and fortunately, it was truly definitely worth the wait. Silksong doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it’s nonetheless an atmospheric Metroidvania with cute bug creatures, tough-as-nails bosses, and some bullshit. However I liked that method within the unique Hole Knight, and it’s nonetheless glorious in Silksong.

For those who’re searching for some stress-free puzzles, pull up a chair with Is This Seat Taken?. Within the recreation, you’re accountable for discovering seats for a bunch of cute geometric shapes who’ve completely different wants. Some may need to sit subsequent to a window, or possibly simply not subsequent to somebody who smells. However if you happen to can’t discover a seating association that works for everybody, you may simply transfer on to the following puzzle with none huge penalty; it retains the stakes low, and generally, some low-stakes puzzling is what suits the invoice.

I’ve very fond recollections of enjoying the unique Lumines: Puzzle Fusion on a PlayStation Moveable, and greater than 20 years after the discharge of that recreation, the Tetris Impact-like Lumines Come up captures that very same magic. The trance-y visuals, superb music, and absorbing Lumines puzzling sucked me in and briefly let me overlook about every part else on the planet; like my colleague Andrew Webster, I discovered Come up to be an almost perfect zen puzzle game.

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo

Earlier this yr, I wrote that Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo would really feel right at home on your Game Boy Advance — and that’s a part of what makes it such an excellent match for the Steam Deck. The sport is a top-down journey the place you battle enemies and discover the sport’s world with a magical yo-yo, and also you’ll get cool yo-yo methods like the flexibility to “stroll the canine” to cross our bodies of water. With glorious pixel artwork and music crammed with blaring horns, it seems like a non secular successor to the GBA video games I liked rising up.

The Drifter is impressed by the old-school LucasArts point-and-click journey recreation method, however as a substitute of telling a foolish, Monkey Island-like story, it cleverly turns the format into a dark, gripping thriller. You possibly can play with a mouse to level and click on, in fact, however if you wish to use the Steam Deck’s controls or a gamepad, The Drifter additionally presents a very good management scheme that makes use of each joysticks to allow you to stroll round and see what you may work together with. The story is filled with thrilling, mind-bending twists. And if you happen to’re something like me, it’ll in all probability hold you up lengthy after your bedtime.