The Steam Summer Sale is live now!

So between 0 and 20. 😛

Aren’t the brand new LCDs still in stock an 15% off? Still a decent deal

Also available drm free on GoG for the same price

Very worth it at that price. I thought the DLCs were great too. 180+ hours

I found out that Satisfactory is on sale right now, and will go up in price by $10 after the sale. So if you want it before 1.0 comes out now would be a great time.

Baldur's gate is 20% off. Definitely definitely worth the price

Slay the spire is like 8 bucks and disco elsyium is like 4 but that's about it.

Celeste is 90% off, Kingdom Come Deliverance is 80% off, Braid Anniversary Edition is 75% off. All worth it imo.

Love some diver Dave, and balto.

Depends on your definition of "new" and "must-have".

• Grapple Dog 75% off — momentum-based grappling hook platformer with a very funky soundtrack and Nitrome-style 2D art (spoiler: the dev was a Nitrome artist)
• Cobalt Core 25% off — deckbuilding in space! There's an actual plot with an interesting cast of characters. The board game-style positioning mechanic was what sold me on the game.
• Cassette Beasts 40% off — creature collector with an identity that isn't just "indie Pokémon". Cool worldbuilding, heartfelt story, grown-up mechanics, and imaginative monster designs that avoid the "animal + element" formula.

I just picked up Dread Delusion, Shadows of Doubt, and Stellar Tactics. I played demos of Dread Delusion and Shadows of Doubt a while back, and both of them blew me away; the former just launched out of early access and the latter is supposed to do so before the end of the year. Stellar Tactics is one that's intriguing, but I haven't played it yet. I've been playing Fallout 2 lately, and it made me want to find a CRPG that was more successful at what Starfield was trying to do; I typed in some tags into the Steam search, Stellar Tactics was what I found, and I think it'll scratch that itch. Stellar Tactics is also in early access, and it's been in early access since 2016 with no end in sight, but it's very systems driven, so I'll likely be okay with playing it early anyway.

I don't know how must have it is, but I've been enjoying Isles of Sea and Sky, a sokoban type puzzle game currently 10% off until July 11th (currently $17.99). I'm pretty sure it's maybe a month or two old at least.

Crab Champions is not exactly new (I think it's been in early access since 2023), but it's really fun and currently just $7.49

Monster Sanctuary! Scratches the Pokemon itch but way better than any Pokemon game ever has

Some offline-friendly FPS games.

• Half-Life 1 and 2
• Borderlands 2 and 3
• Dusk
• SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell

First-person puzzle games (other than Portal 1 and 2, which you've heard about enough already):

• Once you're done both Portals, check out community-made mod campaigns!
  • Portal: Revolution is a prequel to Portal 2 that introduces a few new mechanics.
  • Portal Stories: Mel has pretty much zero new mechanics but cranks up the difficulty.
• Viewfinder
• The Witness

Stardew valley, Midnight sun, diver Dave, persona 5

Not one of the types you were asking about, but Hades feels like it's made for the Steam Deck, and it's a great game (and also on sale)

For FPS games, Doom (2016) is one of the all-time single-player FPS games and runs great on the Deck.

Try these gems:

• Vampire Survivors
• Death must die
• Dead Cells
• Animal Well

It's as if they were made specifically for the Steam Deck

Half Life 2 and it's episodes are always on a massive sale in a Valve bundle.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/232/Valve_Complete_Pack/

There's a lot of stuff there you won't play, but it's a must have for the Half Life and Portal series.

Also Wolfenstein: The New Order and Doom 2016 are great.

Monster Sanctuary! Outstanding mix of metroidvania and pokemon sorta game

The Halo Anniversary collection shines on SteamDeck. It was my first purchase after getting mine, I think.

For Elder Scrolls, I'd recommend giving either Oblivion or Skyrim a whirl, and then after you feel done with one, try the other. In my opinion they are both great for different reasons, and they are different enough to feel like very different games in some ways.

If it helps you make a decision in terms of RPG story feel, Skyrim is more about you as the hero, and Oblivion you're more like a person that happens to be there.

There's great modding resources too if you're into that. Especially on Nexus. Even light modding like some QoL upgrades or bug fixes. I'm not talking crazy mods.

Oh, the endgame for Skyrim (the original DLCs) really do give you some rewarding post-game fun in like a god mode.

Shadow of war is 2.99 CAD

Not sure how it plays on Deck (UI is pretty small scale iirc) but Morrowind is great if you like RPGs with great atmosphere that don't hold your hand, and if you're ok with oldish graphics (some famous mods make it much more palatable however). I don't particularly like Oblivion or Skyrim, they're much more generic whereas Morrowind is pretty unique in terms of universe. But then again you'd have to look up how well it runs on the Deck and whether or not you can install the unofficial bugfix mod among other obligatory things

In case RPG includes JRPG for you: Both Nier:Automata and Nier:Replicant play fantastic in the deck, and those games are far more enjoyable with a controller instead of keyboard and mouse

Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines

Cat Quest

RPG wise all the dragon age games are on sale, plus there's always fallout or skyrim.

That's a great list, Spyro trilogy alone can last you a really long time.

I don't see Corn Kidz 64 on that list.

Nice suggestions! I picked up almost all of them thanks to you!

You will love the soundtrack!

I love disco Elysium

Don't buy Disco Elysium. Pirate it.

Original devs got screwed over by the publisher and have encouraged folks to pirate it as not to let the publisher profit from their shittiness.

Disco Elysium is probably one of the greatest works of art this century.

Duck Detective is great, perfect short game. Hopefully they have the framework there to do more cases like Golden Idol did, because I would love to play more

Duck Detective sounds like a shameless rip-off of Ducktective. Alex Hirsch would probably love that

Did you just step out of a time machine? Their sales haven't had games for ages now. Last one was the monster game, iirc.*

*Oh, there was the Saliens in 2018, too, but that was like a one-off.

Yeah, their sales haven't had events for a while now. You can get trading cards and stickers by browsing around I think, but that's it.