Searching for a grindy game for on the Steam deck

Zwabber@lemmy.world to Games@lemmy.world – 68 points –

Hey everyone!

So I recently bought the Steam deck, and love every second of it. It allows me to play games that I normally never play on PC. Like some indies.

But I have a question. I want a game where I can just braindead level. Bit like Runescape back in the day. Is there some game like that for the Deck?

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Vampire Survivors seems to fit the bill: no story, a bit of tactics, you level up to get new items, and enjoy killing hordes of enemies at once. After every run you can unlock power-ups for the next run.. It's one of my most played games in the last few months. It's one of the classic "just one more run" type of games

Alternative suggestions:

Halls of torment

Soulstone survivors

Hakls of torment is great. Much better than vampire survivors, in a lot of ways

Great game unfortunately it's finishable in about 40-50h. And there isn't much to do after that. You can overnight farm gold but it doesn't really get you anything

Oh, only 40-50 hours of entertainment for £3 what a scam!

Great game. Totally worth the money. But not long and grindy like OP asked for.

Lol I honestly was not sure if your comment was sarcastic or not. I guess you're saying that if you're looking to spend 1000s of hours with a game (like what people do with Runescape) Vampire Survivors is not the best. Still, you can easily get 100+ hours out of the base game + another buch of hours with the DLCs.

Also I think how quick you get tired of it depends on how much you're looking to break the game with golden eggs farming. I personally have not done it but, if you do, it becomes pretty boring pretty fast.

I enjoyed my 50h but it isn't a super long grindy game like OP is asking for.

Also there's nothing to do when you farm golden eggs. You can just keep getting bigger numbers but there are no more unlocks etc. Also the lag is the real enemy at that point.

So great game but not that long.

Second this, it's my usual go to when I want something that doesn't take a ton of brain power. It can also be played with only one hand on the Deck (mapping A and B to L4 and L5).

I was so addicted to this game it was crazy. Finally able to pull myself away now . It's also a fun game to just pick up and have a quick session commuting.

Warframe is pretty grindy and is free to play.

Second this, though it can be a bit rough for new players to get the hang of all the many systems they use. Once you figure out how to build around specific frames though, it’s totally brain dead slaughterfest for the most part

Total braindead slaughter, until you start New War. Then it's souls-like gameplay that you can't back out of. The only way I can play again is if I get someone to play on my account and beat those bosses for me.

It's souls lite for like 30min. I wish I could go redo just the teshin mission. But honestly it's 1 not that hard 2 not that long.

"Not that hard" if you are at all good at souls-likes. I am not, so it's impossible.

I've played the first 5min of DS3 and couldn't stand the camera. No other souls games to my name. It's far more of a beatemup action brawler from say early oughts than souls. You don't really need to dodge. Just spam attacks.

The kahl missions were kinda weird bc you could be doing great and then out of nowhere take a ton of damage. Or the stealth missions where the view cones were funky.

...now I don't want to get back to Warframe.

Why does everything have to be souls-like these days?

It's only souls-like for the duration of the quest - but you're locked into the quest and have to complete it before you can use your frames again.

Loop Hero

Hades

Persona 4 or 5

You absolutely can't play Hades at a braindead level

The game does have an easy mode if you want it to be more brain dead. But it definitely does still require some thought for sure.

Grim dawn

Serious question: I have hundreds of hours in GD, but never installed it on my deck because I never imagined playing it with a controller. Does it work well?

EDIT: Thanks everyone! Looks like I will give GD on deck a try soon.

It works great, but needs a bit of tweaking. Targeting distant foes and picking up specific loot from a pile of items can be tricky sometimes, but nothing remotely game breaking.

I personally changed the touch pad tu function as a mouse for inventory management.

For comparison, I have a few hundred hours in Diablo 3 (PS4 version) which have a great controller scheme and for me it's the best controller experience of an arpg on the market so far. GD its not far behind, but you might need to personalize it.

The only issue I have with GD and a controller is difficulty targeting specific foes and precuse use of movement abilities. Nothing gamebreaking, just annoying.

I have bought GD specifically because someone said it was better on controller than PoE and I kinda wanted to play on the couch when I was sick a while ago.

At least for a couple of hours as a necromancer it worked pretty well.

For now I went back to PoE with K&M, but I don't rule out, that I might give GD another shot.
And if I do, I will try again with the controller.

Or Path Of Exile. Virtually interchangable.

Do you enjoy PoE with a controller?

I didn't like it when I triedit once, but I might give it another chance.

I have a few thousand hours in PoE, the last few hundred have been on the Steam Deck.

Honestly, it's pretty great. Some builds might not work as well though.

Trading is pretty rough though, which is a pretty important part of endgame PoE.

Thanks for mentioning Grim Dawn. Now I have the mightiest urge to play that again :T

Stardew Valley lol

It's very treadmill, but can be fun.

Halls of Torment. Cookie Clicker. Vampire Survivors.

Siralim Ultimate maybe? The Steam description: "Siralim Ultimate is a monster catching, dungeon crawling RPG with a ridiculous amount of depth. Summon over 1200 different creatures and travel through randomly generated dungeons to acquire resources, new creatures, and loot."

At some points, you need to rethink your setup and incorporate the new stuff you've found along the way to be able to mindlessly grind on but I've played for 160 hours so far and having a blast trying different strategies. Evoker is my favorite class so far - casting so many spells before the battle even begins that the enemy never gets their turn.

I played Siralim Ultimate on my deck while my newborn was sleeping on my lap pillow. It is absolutely great for just mindless numbers go up gameplay. It's also fantastic if you want to spend hours theorycrafting and tinkering to get the perfect team for you.

Animator for lyfe. My Animatus goes first, punches one thing, and corpse explosions start rolling.

The Disgaea games are a great grind, tons of Post Story content to delve into and days of pure grinding.

Tactical RPG is the genre, fyi.

Came here to ask if Disgaea was compatible and recommend it if it was.

Path of exile new league (season) drops in 9 days, perfect time to familiarise yourself with basics and hit the grind, and oh boy is there grind to be had.

If you like RuneScape from back in the day we have OldSchool RuneScape based on the game from 2007 and still being updated weekly. Polls control most updates so players get to choose and have feedback with the development of the game. 2 weeks ago they just released Desert Treasure 2, one of the biggest quest updates ever.

Why not Runescape/Old School Runescape? I dont have a Deck but I know a bunch of people who play OSRS on one

Its more like, I have played OSRS for soooo long now. Really want to try something new.

Melvor Idle is an idle game inspired by OSRS (Now published by Jagex) if you're looking for something directly inspired by RuneScape.

Ah ok, when you said "back in the day" it made me think that youd taken one of those "prolonged breaks"

Diablo IV. World of Warcraft. Final Fantasy XIV.

I read the title wrong, and now I'm picturing an angle grinder simulator that uses the motion controls on the deck.

D2R. I know plenty have played the shit out of D2 already but somehow I hadn’t and after seeing how shit D4 was D2R has been great on the deck. Runs flawlessly.

If you're into idle games at all, try out Melvor Idle. Costs $10 but you can try it for free on a browser if you want to see what you're getting. It's heavily inspired by RuneScape. Melvor is without a doubt the best idle game I've ever played, so if you're a fan of the genre and aren't afraid of the grind, I'd highly recommend it.

I almost wanted to recommend this, but for a dedicated game system it's a real emphasis on idle. You'd essentially be tapping every so often or setting up a task and then letting it go. I don't think it's a good dedicated Steam Deck game, but it is a hell of an idle game

True, it can occasionally grab your attention for a few days if you have an immediate goal, but it's more of a background game most of the time. Still thought it was worth bringing up, especially at the mention of runescape!

Forager is a prettty good small indie not quite idle zelda-like, where you gather resources and craft to progress along a whole tech tree. It's pretty fun and chill to play without too much focus.

Try Dinkum, it's like a mixture between Animal's crossing and Srardew Valley and a very chill and relaxed game. There are a bunch of levels for pretty much every one of your skills and it takes a while to progress into the game.

Monster Hunter World/Rise. After mastering monsters it becomes a grind for parts.