What are your favourite offline, low power-usage games?

Steam Deck@sopuli.xyz – 61 points – 1 years ago

I'll be travelling soon and was wondering what are good games for low power-usage and offline?

Previously I enjoyed:

Into The Breach
Baba Is You
Vampire Survivors
Super Mario All-Stars (SNES)

At the moment I'm planning to set up:

Lufia 2 (SNES)
Shadowrun (SNES + Genesis versions)
Golden Sun (GBA)
A Link To The Past (SNES)
Minish Cap (GBA)
A Link Between Worlds (NDS) - never played it, hopefully the controls map well!
Fire Emblem: Awakening (NDS) - same as above, never had a NDS
Oracle Of Ages (GBA)
Chrono Trigger (SNES)
Ogre Battle 64 (N64) - not sure how bad the power usage is on the N64 emulators

Maybe the Ace Attorney and Professor Layton series too which I haven't played. Also GTA1, London and 2 if they work. I love Advance Wars too but I've played it too many times already.

Basically anything that is easy to run, low power, and easy to play with just the controls and small screen in a cramped space. Ideally nothing too difficult / stressful like Hollow Knight that could be hard to play without good screen brightness or cramped.

I like a lot of older PC games but unfortunately they're difficult to play without a mouse and on the small screen - e.g. Ultima VII and Arx Fatalis.

FTL : Faster Than Light, a must have.

I never beat the final boss, like the game is relatively easy up to that point and then it's a huge difficulty spike.

FTL multiverse is a must. It has much more variety and chances to equip yourself for the final boss, removing much of the randomness of being able to win.

Edit: it has a system requirements spike on the original..I dont know what exactly it needs, but my shitty backup laptop doesnt have enough memory for it while the original works fine.

How easy is it to install the mod on Deck?

Quite the hassle it seems.. https://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comments/xlztak/ftl_multiverse_on_steam_deck/

Ahh that looks tricky! There are some comments in that post with (what looks like) easier solutions. I'll have to give this a go at some point.

I got stuck overnight at the airport with my Deck and this game saved me from falling in to insanity. Hard recommend keeping it installed in case of emergency

Been enjoying Dave the Diver after seeing it recommended on Lemmy. Surprised by the depth of the game, no pun intended.

I’ve been addicted to Dave the Diver lately. It’s so good!

Chained Echoes is perfect for this situation.

Wow, this looks really fun I'd never heard of it. Have you played Octopath Traveller?

I played about 10 hours of it but I never finished. I like Chained Echoes a lot more tbh.

I was looking at this game, and it was what literally made me pull the trigger on a steamdeck... It should be arriving today, and i hope to have the ssd swapped, reimaged, and get that installed so i can play some this evening!

For me lately it's Tales of Maj'Eyal, Halls of Torment, and especially right now Shapez and FTL (with the Multiverse mod).

+1 for Halls of Torment. You won't be able to think about anything else.

On a side note, how is Tales on Deck? Does it work well with the controller?

so glad to see this, I just got a steam deck this week and tales of majeyal is my all time favorite game ever. I've played for years and beat it once, my greatest achievement

You can make almost anything work well on deck with steam input

I think it works just fine. You can solo mouse the whole thing with the right trackpad but I also have the hotbar mapped to the left pad.

Don't Starve (Together), Cuphead, Stardew Valley, Dead Cells, Hollow Knight

These are my current go-tos

If you want a good list of battery-saving games:

https://sharedeck.games/static/battery-savers

Cool website, thanks for the link!

If you into city building and realtime strategy Widelands might be of interest for you. It is an open source game inspired by the Settlers II, but with much more depth and with online play. It is really freaking cool and you can play it for over 6h. It is installable via Discover on the desktop.

https://www.widelands.org

Here's some recent games I enjoyed that all run well on Steamdeck

fan patched (tweak romhack) copy of FFTactics:WotL (PSP) (the fan patch for this game fixes many of my grievances)
Chrono Trigger (NDS) has some extras
FF12 Zodiac Age (Steam) doesn't burn through power too quickly (hasn't gotten hot yet)
FFTA (GBA)
Persona 3 Portable (Steam) gets okay battery time
Stardew Valley (Steam)
FF7 (PS1)
Inscryption (Steam) was quite good; the klunky controls work OK on turn base games
Fallout: New Vegas (Steam) is very playable
Hades (Steam)

Return of Obra Dinn. Low power but high aesthetics. One of the most unique gaming experiences I've ever had and quite perfect for the Deck.

Yeah, it's one of the best games ever. The Case Of The Golden Idol was good too but not quite as great.

I'm holding out for Shadows Of Doubt.

Hollow knight!

I went camping a bit ago and loaded my Steam Deck with a bunch of games. The only game I ended up playing was Mega Man: The Sequel Wars. It's a Genesis/Mega Drive remake of my favorite NES game Mega Man 4, with many more features. It was crazy fun, and my Steam Deck lasted the whole trip on one charge. If you don't want a hard game, you can set it to Easy difficulty, turn on Infinite Lives, or activate any of the other cheats it provides.

Now that my Sequel Wars shill is out of the way, here are bunch of other battery efficient games:

Emulating retro consoles, but it seems like you have that covered.
Any Shantae game. Light-hearted, casual, well designed 2D platformers.
Halls of Torment. Similar to Vampire Survivors, and I personally like it more. Worth it for the classic-PC-game art style alone.
Boneraiser Minions: Also like Vampire Survivors, but instead of trying to see how many projectiles you can fire per second, you're raising a small undead army to fight for you while you focus on dodging. Very fun.
Ace Attorney. The first trilogy is entirely 2D and is basically a visual novel with puzzle elements. What some people do for visual novels on Steam Deck is limit the framerate to something miniscule like 15 fps. The battery lasts for an eternity.
I know you said you don't want to play Hollow Knight, but I'm physically incapable of doing a Steam Deck recommendations list without saying Hollow Knight.

This is amazing, I didn't know this existed. Brings back memories of getting whooped by Pharaoh Man. That utilization of the genesis sound chip is 10/10 too

I've been playing Endless Sky, which is a free space sim (lite). Been really enjoying it.

Going on my first flight soon. Will games still launch in airplane mode? Do I need to do some prep?

I noticed that you have to launch some stuff for the first time when you're not in airplane mode. So don't just download a game and then hop on a plane without at least opening it first!

Most of the games I like to play on Deck have to target the 3-4 hours as my "Sweet Spot" so most of these will fall in there:

Dredge

Dredge is billed as a cosmic horror fishing game, and it is super engaging, and works great with gamepad controls. I played through the entire thing on Steam Deck. I think I lowered some graphics settings to hit the sweet spot but it wasn't any kind of extreme compromise due to the game's low poly art style.

The Messenger

You're a ninja who gets sent on an adventure to defeat the demons who attacked your village. There's some gameplay and story twists I don't want to spoil, but even outside of that it's a fun game with good platforming, new abilities, and boss battles. And it's got a great sense of humor

3DS games

I don't think I've played any that don't offer at least 3+ hours. My go-to is Mario Kart 7, but pretty much anything in Citra is cool. My 3DS battery died out so I can only play tethered to the charger, so it's nice to have an alternative - plus you can upscale them to 720p and play them in HD. Lots of fun!

Hades

I really dislike most roguelike games, to the point that I lose hype now when I hear a cool indie game is one. Hades is one of the handful of exceptions for me. Combat feels very fluid and responsive, the visuals are gorgeous, and it sips battery.

A lot of people say they like the story and characters, though I'm not really clicking with it. But I haven't finished it yet so maybe I'm just not at the cool story stuff yet? Either way, I'm enjoying myself quite a bit.

The Banner Saga is a superb turn-based strategy game. Slay the Spire is a deck-builder roguelike. Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn are also great.

Yeah, I keep Slay The Spire installed too.

Wildermyth is fun too but unfortunately the performance is awful.

Children of Morta

Moonlighter

Wintermoor Tactics Club

Reading what you previously like, I assumed you would prefer something that focus more on gameplay than (usually text-heavy) story.

If that's the case, then I don't think Ace Attorney or Professor Layton will be up your alley. Maybe Professor Layton is better because it has puzzles but tbh the games' vibe feel geared more toward kids, I still enjoyed the mystery though.

My recommendation:

CrossCode (I'm playing it right now, loving it so far. Classis JRPG visual but without the sluggish turn-based combat, I predict it's going to be quite long)
Gorogoa (Pure puzzle, kinda short)

Advance Wars (GBA). A classic and very low power!

I just got back from a vacation where Brotato filled that role.

I've really been enjoying playing early 2000s sports games on PS2 and then all the GameCube games.

Been playing Halls of Torment, best $4 I’ve ever spent.

I've heard about this one a few times now. What are the difference between this and Vampire Survivors? What does one do better than the other?

Coming from a weirdo who didn't like Vampire Survivors but couldn't get enough of Halls of Torment:

You can aim and fire manually, with toggles for auto aim and fire if you wish. Every character starts with a unique weapon that fires in the direction they aim. When you level up, you select from one of four randomly chosen stat buffs. There's some RNG involved here, but it's much more restrained than in VS. No matter what you get, you're always getting a good build. You can get new weapons and equipment by defeating bosses, and these are extremely helpful (without feeling like your build depends on getting the right abilities.) I didn't like Vampire Survivors because it felt too uninteractive and luck-dependant, which I know is not the case and I'm just bad at the game, but it just wasn't fun for me. In Halls of Torment, every character is good, most builds are good, and no matter what RNG I get I feel like I'm on a good run. I feel like I'm immediately rewarded for my skill, whereas VS makes me feel like my skill is far less important than my upgrades and RNG. (Again, I know VS takes skill, it's just how it made me feel personally. I'm not saying VS is bad, it just didn't mesh with me.)

I'd also add that by the time you reach 30 minutes in VS, you're having to basically vaporized everything on the screen at once and then Death just one-shots me...I guess there is a way to beat that end-boss for a level? The difference is that the first time I made it to the 30 minute mark in HoT (which took comparatively much less time...maybe because I'm just more familiar with the style of game?), I at least had a fighting chance against the 1st map's boss, and your end-level builds seem leave more room for exploration. The quests or achievements I prefer to VS, and I also prefer the way items work (including the well) generally. VS is a fun game, but HoT really improves on it in many different ways, including the visuals/tone (which is very much Diablo-esque).

Agreed, there's so much I prefer about HoT over VS.

But in a quick defense of VS, I don't think the player is really supposed to beat Death at first. He's supposed to be the end of your run. You can defeat him, but I think you have to grind out a bunch of upgrades to be able to do it. The end-of-run Lords in HoT are meant to be normal bosses that you defeat. That part is less of a balance issue and more of a different design philosophy. Death is supposed to be insanely hard, the Lords in HoT are meant to be fair.

The difference is that the first time I made it to the 30 minute mark in HoT (which took comparatively much less time…maybe because I’m just more familiar with the style of game?)

I've never made it to the end of a run in VS, but I got there decently quickly in HoT. If there's one complaint I can make about the game, it's that it's a smidge too easy.

Dredge! I played it entirely on Steam Deck, and it was a great, relaxing, intriguing experience. Would recommend

Monster Hunter Rise, Dark Souls 3, and Fallout New Vegas all have really impressive battery life, considering they aren't 2D retro titles.

If you liked Vampire Survivors you'll probably love Brotato. I've been playing it for months. It's offline and low power. Just needs a thumbstick and one button.