I've collected so many free games on the Epic store, but almost never play any of them due to issues with them running on the SteamDeck. With some persuasion they can be made to work, but I don't want to be tinkering when I just want to play a game for 5-10 minutes.
Apart from multiplayer games with anti-cheat I’ve had no real problems running Epic or GoG games on Steam Deck via Heroic Launcher. In fact, SD is helping me work through my free Epic games backlog.
The most problematic was Deathloop, which flashed up some messages about it being an unsupported APU but ultimately worked fine. Occasionally some games crash after waking from a suspend.
How's the experience of playing mouse centric games (like Civilization, Factorio and other strategy games, for instance) on the Steam Deck?
The pads work ok, they work more like a thumb ball than a track pad, but it’s no substitute for a mouse. You can just use a Bluetooth mouse, of course.
A bigger issue is the size and resolution of the screen. Many games of this type assume at least 1080p.
Pardon my ignorance... So people actually connect mice and keyboards to the deck? How does that work in terms of playing position? I thought the deck is mostly targeted towards mobile players who will have it on a bed, chair etc where there won't be any surfaces for using a mouse or other peripherals.
SO you can do what I'm currently doing because I'm in the middle of moving countries and my desktop isnt here!
I have a monitor i'm borrowing from work, a mouse, keyboard, and the steamdeck Dock. And I just treat it like a desktop. You can still easily use steam big picture mode. OR you can boot to desktop, as the Steamdeck is just a Arch linux install. Its honestly amazing.
Like the other poster, I use the SD for convenience, snatching 10 minutes of gameplay wherever I am and whenever I have time, and that means not plugging anything in.
But the SD is just a PC in a handheld form factor. You can plug in a dock, external monitor and other peripherals, only removing it when travelling, if that suits you.
5-10m? Sounds more akin to a phone/mobile game.
The sheer convenience of the SteamDeck is what has brought me back into gaming. It's so easy to pick it up whilst cooking etc. and play a few minutes of Blue Prince - the power button pause/resume is such a killer feature. (Also, 5-10 minutes is enough time for a CyberPunk 2077 mission)