I’ll say it straight: management sims and gamepads used to be a toxic relationship. I remember fighting radial menus in other builders, losing a whole evening to one stubborn path, and shoving the controller back in the drawer with a bitter “never again.” Planet Zoo 2 broke that streak. Sitting on the couch with a…
I’ll say it upfront: a zoo tycoon sim on a 7-inch screen shouldn’t work this well. Planet Zoo 2 does ship as Steam Deck Verified, and that matters. Controller layouts exist, the UI text is readable on the small display, and you aren’t squinting at menus designed for a 27-inch monitor. But “Verified” is not…
Okay, let me vent for a second. I had been hyped for Deep Dish Dungeon for weeks. A first-person metroidvania from Behold Studios, with a goofy, stylized look, dungeon crawling, and combat that looks properly crunchy? Take my money. I hit that Play button on Steam with a snack in one hand and a fully…
Okay, I need to vent for a second. I had been hyped for Deep Dish Dungeon for weeks. A first-person metroidvania from Behold Studios, with a goofy, stylized look, tight dungeon crawling and combat that looks like pure chaos? Sign me up. I cleared my evening, grabbed a drink, hit Play on Steam, and got…
I’ve played a lot of ARPGs on handhelds. Some ran great on the Steam Deck and some made me want to throw it across the room. Last Epoch sits somewhere in between. It’s a brilliant game, and the build crafting alone is worth the price of admission. But on a Deck it has a split…
I’ve sunk an embarrassing number of hours into Eterra, and a good chunk of them happened on a couch, in bed, and once in a waiting room where I definitely should have been paying attention to something else. Last Epoch is one of the best ARPGs you can play right now. The itemization is deep,…
I’ve been strapping myself into Strangereal cockpits since the PS1 days, so when Ace Combat 8 landed on October 1, I did what any sensible lunatic would do: I tried to cram it into a handheld. The Steam Deck, to be precise, both the LCD and the OLED. Short version: it works. Long version: it…
Okay, confession time. I have sunk an embarrassing number of hours into Blades & Battles, and the moment I realized I had no idea where my save files lived, my stomach dropped. I had just finally beaten a boss that had been wrecking me for an entire evening, and my brain went: ‘what if this…
Okay, I need to talk about this game because it’s been living rent-free in my head for the past two weeks and I have feelings. If you’ve been scrolling Steam looking for the next colony-sim fix and you stumbled across Wild West Pioneers from EmpireCraft Studios, you’ve probably asked yourself the same question I did:…