The Steam Deck is a fascinating bit of handheld machinery, capable of taking thousands of PC games with you on the go. But for all the games verified to work on the Steam Deck, there are thousands more than you might not think that work on the system.

If you don’t mind doing a little work, you can get so many great games, from retro classics to modern MMOs all working smoothly on Valve’s handheld. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting gaming opportunities available on the Steam Deck and see if we can pick out your next gaming obsession with the powerful little handheld.

5 Fall Guys

Don’t fall with your Steam Deck

Look, Fall Guys is great, there’s no denying that. Between hundreds of little costumes to dress your little beans up in, tons of very silly obstacle course-like mini-games, and a fully customizable level editor to torture your friends with, there are tons of hours of fun to be had with this cutesy party game.

Even though Fall Guys was delisted from Steam a while ago, you can still get it to work on the Steam Deck with a little tinkering. If you already have a copy of the game on Steam, the game runs fairly seamlessly. However, if you’re playing it through the Epic Games Store, you might have to do a little extra, but it's certainly not the worst.

Fall Guys is a bite-sized gaming experience, with full games lasting only around 20 minutes, or shorter if you happen to be unlucky enough to get eliminated in one of the earlier rounds. Making Fall Guys perfect for short trips or a few games during lunch.

4 Genshin Impact

Get that gatcha fix anywhere

One of the best open-world RPGs around, one that can rival the incredible The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in terms of scale, Genshin Impact is even better on the Steam Deck than it is on mobile devices thanks to the higher power of the Deck.

Even though the game has been around for around five years, getting into it isn’t a problem. You can still get hundreds of hours' worth of content from free quests, adventures, and lands to explore with just a little bit of effort.

Getting Genshin Impact to work on the Steam Deck doesn’t require much. All you have to do is:

• Install the Heroic Games Launcher.
• Download Genshin Impact and install it through the Heroic Games Launcher.
• Force Proton Experimental in the Steam Deck settings.
• Add Genshin Impact to the Game tab in Heroic Games Launcher and play.

If that doesn’t work, don’t fret. There are quite a few tutorials around you can follow that can get you there.

3 Final Fantasy XIV

Hydaelyn awaits

If Genshin Impact isn’t your vibe, you might like a true MMO experience like what you find with Final Fantasy XIV. This massive game has not only a huge base game to play through but five expansions as well, with the most recent being Dawntrail from 2024.

You can get practically anything you want out of this game, from raids to an incredible story, to uncovering hundreds of hours of side quests to get lost in. Each expansion brings new worlds to explore, new threats to defeat, and more chill experiences like purchasing a home and going fishing.

Keep in mind that the full game and all the expansions will take up more than 140GB of storage, so if space is running a little tight you’ll have to make room.

2 World of Warcraft

You are not prepared

Even without the help of a mouse and keyboard, you can explore the lands of Azeroth and beyond on the Steam Deck. World of Warcraft, one of the most influential MMOs of all time. The game is still enjoyable with a controller and some unique keybindings, but that’s not to say you can’t hook up a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and get raiding.

Playing World of Warcraft on your Steam Deck gets easier once you add a few mods and the Battle.net client on your device. The only mod you really need to start playing is the ConsolePort one, which makes the leap from keyboard to controller much easier to adapt to.

Downloading World of Warcraft is easy enough through desktop mode, though it will take some work to get playing. Once you do, you’ll have thousands of hours of gameplay at your fingertips.

1 Minecraft

Yearn for the mines from anywhere

The classic sandbox survival game that has dominated gaming culture for ages, Minecraft, is playable on the Steam Deck. While on the go, you can get blown up by creepers at the most inopportune time.

Getting Minecraft up and running might be the most difficult of the games we discussed so far, but the near-endless amount of gameplay it will unleash for you will take up all of your free time. We love the game so much that we have our own walkthrough on setting up Minecraft on your Steam Deck.

Games for anywhere you are

Since the Steam Deck runs on SteamOS, based on Arch Linux open source software, you have a ton of options to do practically whatever you want with it. Don’t forget that this leaves the possibility for emulation, so you can run older games that might have been locked behind time and console exclusivity.