8 nice video games on your Steam Deck from 2025

I performed a lot of video games on my Steam Deck this yr. It appeared like there was a unending listing of unbelievable indie video games to attempt — 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 often joyful to take care of that just because I can play them on the sofa or out of the home.

When you’re unwrapping a Steam Deck for the vacations this yr, or have some Steam reward playing cards burning a gap in your pocket, listed here 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 everywhere in 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 sport. And with runs often taking lower than quarter-hour or so, it’s an awesome sport to choose 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 although 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. Of us on ProtonDB even have some recommendations to tweak settings to make the visuals higher. If Steam Deck is your solely platform that may play the sport, it’s nonetheless a good place to expertise The Game Awards’ Game of the Year.

I do know I put Hades II on my model of this listing final yr, however the roguelike bought 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 deliver to battle, a bunch of recent 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 sport, 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 cherished that method within the authentic Hole Knight, and it’s nonetheless glorious in Silksong.

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

I’ve very fond reminiscences of enjoying the unique Lumines: Puzzle Fusion on a PlayStation Transportable, and greater than 20 years after the discharge of that sport, 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 neglect about every thing 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 tips like the power to “stroll the canine” to cross our bodies of water. With glorious pixel artwork and music stuffed with blaring horns, it looks like a non secular successor to the GBA video games I cherished rising up.

The Drifter is impressed by the old-school LucasArts point-and-click journey sport method, however as an alternative of telling a foolish, Monkey Island-like story, it cleverly turns the format into a dark, gripping thriller. You’ll be able to 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 gives a very sensible 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 stuffed with thrilling, mind-bending twists. And in case you’re something like me, it can most likely preserve you up lengthy after your bedtime.