Dominion on the Steam Deck works rather well

The Dominion card game has kind of taken over our Tuesday game nights. The great thing about it is that by using different cards each week you can get a totally different game experience. I’ve started using my Steam Deck to play it (you can find the game on Steam). It works rather well. Probably overkill, but it works for me. I like having a Dominon game on the go when watching naff telly. Today I nearly managed beat the medium AI opponent, which was rather pleasing.

Use a phone box to save..

Spent a happy evening sat on the sofa playing Yakuza 0 on the Steam Deck while the rest of the family watched Strictly Come Dancing. It took me a while (and a search) to discover that you can only save your game when you are at a phone box…

Steam Deck

It turns out that I don’t just buy cameras when I’m writing. I’ve managed to scrape together enough cash to get myself a Steam Deck. I didn’t really think I wanted one until I saw number one son’s. The idea of playing proper games on a handheld console was rather intoxicating. I hardly ever play games on my PC. They feel too much like work. The only exception to this rule is Microsoft Flight Sim. And that’s not a game. It’s a simulation.

Anyhoo, back to the Steam Deck. I joined the queue for the device a while back and I was very surprised to get to the front so quickly. Number one son had to wait a long time for his and I was digging in for the long haul when I got an email earlier in the week saying mine was ready for shipping.

Up until now my go-to handheld has been the Nintento Switch. The Steam Deck is bigger, but not in a bad way. It doesn’t seem that much heavier than the Switch, but it is definitely more bulky . The screen is very good, with great colours and contrast and the controls are good too. I think the best way to look at it is as a nice game controller with a screen stuck in the middle. There are ventilation holes in the back and the top and a fan which seems inclined to panic. It will be very quiet and then suddenly kick in with a roar for a few seconds and then go back to quiet again. I mainly use it with Bluetooth headphones, so I don’t see this as a problem, although I worry what would happen if I blocked the holes on the back of the device.

The integration with Steam is very impressive, although I prefer the store browsing experience on the desktop. Quite a few of my games are Steam Deck certified and just work. I’ve done no special setting up or anything and I’m getting a great experience right out of the box. The arrival of the deck corresponds with a nice Sega sale, so I’ve picked up a bunch of Yakuza games along with some other classics at very low prices. One of the great things about Steam is that their sales include things you can get at prices that you would never see on a console.

I’ve got the middle configuration of the device which has 256GB of internal storage, although so far I’m putting everything on a 256GB external SD card. More storage would be nice so I’ll be looking at oncoming sales to see what turns up.

There is a really active emulation community around the device which I’d like to get into later, but for now I’m quite happy on the sofa playing Yakuza.