I played a lot of games on my Steam Deck this year. It seemed like there was a never-ending list of incredible indie games to try — The Verge wrote about a lot of them! — and many worked brilliantly on Valve’s handheld gaming PC. Some bigger games made a splash on Steam Deck, too, and while they may not look as good as on a beefy PC, I’m usually happy to deal with that simply because I can play them on the couch or out of the house.
If you’re unwrapping a Steam Deck for the holidays this year, or have some Steam gift cards burning a hole in your pocket, here are some of my recommendations of games released in 2025 that you might want to check out. (And if you want more ideas, check out my favorites from 2024.)
Ball x Pit blends elements from games like Breakout, Vampire Survivors, and city builders into a delightful, genre-blending roguelike. In the main part of the game, you shoot balls toward an ever-advancing group of enemies, and after picking up a bunch of gems and upgrades, you’ll eventually turn into a force of nature with balls flying all over the screen. After a run, you can build up a base to improve your stats and unlock characters — some of which are quite clever, like one that turns Ball x Pit into a turn-based game. And with runs usually taking less than 15 minutes or so, it’s a great game to pick up and play on your Steam Deck.
Sandfall Interactive’s debut RPG floored me earlier this year; it’s an outstanding package with exhilarating turn-based battles, a great parrying system, memorable characters, a gripping story, and music that I still come back to even though I finished the game months ago. On Steam Deck, the game doesn’t look quite as good as it does on my PS5, but it’s still playable and was recently verified for Valve’s handheld PC. Folks on ProtonDB also have some suggestions to tweak settings to make the visuals better. If Steam Deck is your only platform that can play the game, it’s still a decent place to experience The Game Awards’ Game of the Year.
I know I put Hades II on my version of this list last year, but the roguelike got its big 1.0 update in September, and it’s damn good. Supergiant Games builds on the first Hades with a new protagonist, new boons to bring to battle, a bunch of new characters to give ambrosia to, two new routes to explore, and another banger-filled soundtrack. Supergiant even tweaked the ending to make it better. Hades II is Supergiant at the top of its game, and just like my colleague Ash Parrish said in 2024, it’s the perfect Steam Deck game.
After years of waiting and lots of clown makeup, Hollow Knight’s sequel finally launched in September, and thankfully, it was actually worth the wait. Silksong doesn’t reinvent the wheel; it’s still an atmospheric Metroidvania with adorable bug creatures, tough-as-nails bosses, and some bullshit. But I loved that formula in the original Hollow Knight, and it’s still excellent in Silksong.
If you’re looking for some relaxing puzzles, pull up a chair with Is This Seat Taken?. In the game, you’re responsible for finding seats for a bunch of adorable geometric shapes who have different needs. Some might want to sit next to a window, or maybe just not next to someone who smells. But if you can’t find a seating arrangement that works for everyone, you can just move on to the next puzzle without any big penalty; it keeps the stakes low, and sometimes, some low-stakes puzzling is what fits the bill.
I have very fond memories of playing the original Lumines: Puzzle Fusion on a PlayStation Portable, and more than 20 years after the release of that game, the Tetris Effect-like Lumines Arise captures that same magic. The trance-y visuals, amazing music, and absorbing Lumines puzzling sucked me in and briefly let me forget about everything else in the world; like my colleague Andrew Webster, I found Arise to be an almost perfect zen puzzle game.
Earlier this year, I wrote that Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo would feel right at home on your Game Boy Advance — and that’s part of what makes it such a good fit for the Steam Deck. The game is a top-down adventure where you battle enemies and explore the game’s world with a magical yo-yo, and you’ll get cool yo-yo tricks like the ability to “walk the dog” to cross bodies of water. With excellent pixel art and music filled with blaring horns, it feels like a spiritual successor to the GBA games I loved growing up.
The Drifter is inspired by the old-school LucasArts point-and-click adventure game formula, but instead of telling a silly, Monkey Island-like story, it cleverly turns the format into a dark, gripping thriller. You can play with a mouse to point and click, of course, but if you want to use the Steam Deck’s controls or a gamepad, The Drifter also offers a really smart control scheme that uses both joysticks to let you walk around and see what you can interact with. The story is full of exciting, mind-bending twists. And if you’re anything like me, it will probably keep you up long after your bedtime.
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