Outer wilds is probably one of the best single player games to come out in a long while. I’d rank it up there with disco elysium

Vampire Survivors

commie game

Have you played Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic? One of the most Marxist games ever made along with Vicky 3. It’s pretty intimidating but it has a lot of difficulty features so you can start with just the basics and ramp up at your own pace.

Vampire Survivors and Balatro and Halls of Torment if you want to kill all the time.

It’s not a strategy game and it’s not communist either, but if you like story then you gotta play Ghost Trick! It was originally released on DS but it got a remake for PC/xbox/switch/ps4 a while back that’s good too.

It’s a puzzle game where you play as a recently-departed spirit that’s trying to solve their own murder. You accomplish this by possessing and manipulating nearby objects to change the course of events leading up to your death. Every level is like a Rube Goldberg machine and everything is animated beautifully. It has the most gripping plot I’ve ever seen in a video game and I binged the entire thing from beginning to end when I first played it. It’s the game version of a page-turner. It’s an A-presser.

Roguelite card games: Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Wildfrost

Games I’ve enjoyed on steamdeck:

• Snowrunner - I’m never not shilling for snowrunner. It’s so good.
• dark souls / Elden ring
• Dredge
• fallout new vegas
• the outer wilds
• dusk
• civ 6
• hades

I also enjoyed Goroga it’s like a 40minute game but really good.

West of Loathing and Shadows Over Loathing are quirky adventure games with surprisingly good writing that play well on deck.

Supergiant games: Bastion, Transistor, and Hades. All have good stories and play well. I’d bet Pyre too but I haven’t played it.

Other games I think are good on deck but might not fit your criteria (mostly roguelikes of some flavor):

• The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
• Cult of the Lamb
• Rogue Legacy
• Going Under
• Dark Souls I, II, and III

The most impressive story-focused games I got on Steam Deck are

• Wolfenstein 2: New Order

Looks amazing on Steam Deck and runs really well, more story focused FPS though it has a mixed tone, it’s $5 for a grey-market steam key from G2A. It’s also available through a DODI repack on 1337x.to or Fitgirl

CW: Very dark and very violent despite its mixed tone, does not sanitize Nazi violence against queers and other enemies of fascists, has story sequences from POV of child abuse and forced animal abuse

• Red Dead Redemption 2

One of the best looking games ever and runs well on Steam Deck. Haven’t gotten too far into the story yet but it’s really good.

• Atom RPG

Steam Deck verified, haven’t tried it yet because I want a full week to get really immersed. It’s a classic Fallout style game set in the Soviet Union and it’s written by communists

• Death Stranding

You play as Norman Reedus doing sci-fi mutual aid to rebuild America through infrastructure by Hideo Kojima

• Metro Exodus

Soviet FPS Fallout with survival horror elements, semi-open zones, story-driven, for train lovers and people that love the post-apocalyptic Soviet setting. You are incentivized to avoid combat when possible. Characters made positive comments about Mao and you are more or less part of a small commune, beautiful communist imagery and natural setting. (Doesn’t support Steam Cloud Saves, requires manual backup)

• Fallout New Vegas

It’s Fallout New Vegas

• Alan Wake

Third person horror shooter inspired by classics like Twin Peaks and The Shining, made by Remedy, kind of reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other 90s cheese

• Aperture Desk Job

This is the pack-in game for Steam Deck by Valve, but does not come pre-installed, teaches you about Steam Deck controls

• Resident Evil 2 / 3 / Village

The newer Resident Evil games run really well on Steam Deck and have more emphasis on their story and cutscenes

• Cyberpunk 2077

Takes some level of tinkering, low-medium settings with XESS enabled in the game settings to good 40fps performance but looks really impressive on Steam Deck

The themes are a miss but the cinematography and acting in this game is phenomenal

• Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Side scrolling animated adventure, uses some gorgeous and innovative 2d animation systems, lots of eye candy I think it’s like a Metroidvania somewhat

• Prey

First person sci-fi immersive sim like classic Deus Ex, haven’t tried it but it’s a niche classic

• Fallout 1 / 2

Classic Fallout is available and playable, may take some tinkering with setting and controller settings

• LA Noire

You play a 1930s New York Detective solving murders, by Rockstar Games

• Prince of Persia original trilogy

It’s kind of like Zelda and the only really good games Ubisoft ever made, first game is like a fairy tale, later ones become more edgy

Fitgirl repacks on https://fitgirl-repacks.site/

DODI repacks on https://1337x.to/

Balatro, Vampire Survivors and Nubby’s Number Factory

If you’ve never played Celeste, check it out. It’s a challenging platformer with a very touching story, cute artwork, and a great soundtrack. Also has a vibrant modding community with thousands of third-party levels, including hundreds gathered together into collabs with consistent difficulty progressions and hours of original soundtrack. Greatest platformer of all time. You should be able to run the mods on a Steam Deck.

Also, look into setting up RetroArch on there (not the version distributed on Steam though - it lacks the function to download emulator ‘cores’ which you will need to play various games).

FTL faster than light is one of the sites favorite games

The same people that made it made into the breach which is a fun turn based strategy game

There are some fun classics like Shovel Knight and Hollow knight which are fun

Also Katana Zero is really good

Last of us part one is blowing me away. Also ghost of Tsushima, cyberpunk, heck even old school far cry games, crysis 2 cheap as hell and extremely fun. Of course the best game of all time is disco Elysium

I’m having a lot of fun with subnautica and subnautica below zero. Plays well on the deck

Brigador, Dread Delusion, Citizen Sleeper 1/2