After about two weeks with the Steam Deck, I think I have enough experience to do that writeup.
In short:
Wow, I can't believe I didn't think I would like it. it feels so natural and has slotted into my daily routine seamlessly.
In long:
I kind of bought the steamdeck on a whim. It had been something I was curious about since release, but I had always convinced myself that I didn't travel enough to make use of it. I've had a Switch 1 since launch, and basically only played in handheld mode if I was actively in transit (on airplanes, at the beach, in a car, etc.). I did not enjoy it, and that was mostly borne out of necessity to pass the time (I think I spent more time playing my 3DS over that period than the switch in handheld mode.
In any case, I'm spending a lot of my time on campus doing grad student things, and wanted something that wasn't doomscrolling to allow me to take little breaks. Combine that with the desire to make sure Thwimbly was deck-verified for when I start messing around with publishing, and the promise of being able to dock it to play local splitscreen games with my brother, and I finally caved.
I ended up snagging the 512gb OLED model and a dock. There was part of me that wished I had waited another two weeks for the autumn sale to kick off and get the lowest tier model for $319 but I'm pretty glad I went with the higher tier one. I had heard some folks say that the screen is significantly better, and while I can't verify that, the OLED does look awesome.
I've goofed around with a bunch of different things, including:
Emulation: I've ripped about half of my physical PSP library, and from what I've tested, the Steam Deck runs them perfectly under RetroArch. Since I ripped them all myself, 100% legal <3
Non-Steam games: I'm a playtester for an upcoming indie platformer (I'm not sure I can say which one yet), and took their windows EXE and just yeeted it onto the deck. it works pretty well! there were some resolution shenanigans that took some time to figure out, but eventually it just resolved itself.
Package store apps: I installed Obsidian, the notes app on the Deck in hopes that I could use it to give my presentations in lieu of my dying macbook, and it seems to be working alright. It defaults to a wacky resolution but it is readable.
Verified games: They work basically perfectly. I've had a couple issues with Silksong running at a slightly stretched resolution, but I'm not 100% sure that's the deck's fault, and in any case, I was able to fix it by using the settings. I haven't played too much of it, but Indiana Jones and the Great Circle does run on Steam Deck, which is more than I can say for my desktop (I don't have an RTX card, but I managed to snag a copy when Humble mistakenly set it to free last December). It looks kind of grainy but I can imagine it being a good play.
Playable Games: Hit or miss. Garbanzo Quest ran perfectly out of the box, Star of Providence took some finagling to make the controls feel alright, and I refunded Slime Rancher immediately because I couldn't figure out what the heck the controls were mapping to.
Docked Mode: Works pretty well once the TV connects. I'm not sure if it's just my TV being weird, but sometimes it doesn't connect automatically, and I need to power on the deck, unplug it, and plug it back in. It took some work to get my Xbox controller to work, but that was more of a microsoft issue than a Valve issue (needed to firmware update my controller -_-)
FPS games: Probably won't feel good. I've tried a couple (Severed Steel, Selaco) and I don't believe either has aim assist, making the handheld experience pretty difficult. I want to try Half Life, but haven't gotten around to it yet. If anyone has any recs for FPS games that feel better on deck, lmk.
Anyhow, I need to go decide whether I want to keep playing Silksong on Deck or go back and work on my own game (or clean my room but we all know that's the least likely option)
