Here’s 5 Of The Best Queer Games To Play On Steam’s New Handheld, The Steam Deck

After years of waiting, Aussies are finally able to get their hands on the Steam Deck, a handheld device that allows gamers to play anywhere, anytime. Today, we’re looking to give you an insight into the machine’s abilities by going over some of the best games you can play on the Deck!

What is the Steam Deck? 

First hitting the market in North America and Europe in 2022, the Steam Deck is a portable PC designed specifically for gaming. Created by Valve (the gamemakers behind Portal and Half-Life), the Deck connects to your library of Steam games and allows you to install them, all while customising your experience. 

Compared to the similar-looking Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck brings a number of key advantages. It’s simply a more powerful piece of hardware, meaning you’ll be able to play a much wider library of games that both look and run better. 

In my experience with the 512GB OLED model, most games I’ve installed from Steam have worked well right away, while others have required only a few settings to be tweaked before performing exceptionally well. You’ll be surprised at the power this thing has!

As such, here are 5 game recommendations that’ll surprise you with the power of the Steam Deck – some are directly queer while others are more adjacent, but they’re all some of the best games that I’ve played in recent memory that operate superbly on the Deck. 

Baldur’s Gate 3

It almost feels wrong to play a game as earth-shatteringly big and unashamedly gay as Baldur’s Gate 3 on the Steam Deck; this multi-Game of the Year winning RPG based on the world of Dungeons & Dragons is still regularly bringing in players by the hundreds of thousands on Steam, and maintains a strong fanbase with a particularly strong queer contingent. 

Baldur’s Gate 3 runs surprisingly well on the Deck – though not as smooth as its PC or console counterparts, I was able to get the game running at a fairly consistent 30 frames per second on Medium settings, thanks largely to AMD’s FSR frame generation feature set to Ultra Quality.

Every fight I tested ran well, including the final boss, and on Medium the quality of animations and textures kept me impressed. It’s certainly not a flawless experience; the game performs a lot better indoors when there’s less going on and the biggest dips in performance came while I was testing Act 3 in the densely populated city area of Baldur’s Gate. 

However, this isn’t a massive issue. Considering it’s largely a game revolving around dialogue trees and turn-based tactical combat, Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t need flawless performance to be thoroughly enjoyed, and the ability to play it whenever, wherever should be enough to prove the potential of the Deck. 

Hades 

Familial conflict, bisexual panic and lots of sword-wielding; the story of Zagreus in Hades is one many queer people can relate to, telling of a young man looking to escape the stagnant life inside his father’s house in search of answers about himself. 

Chances are high that if you’ve been playing games in the 2020s, you’ve likely already played Supergiant Games’ hack-and-slash roguelike masterpiece – it’s available on pretty much everything, including the Switch and some mobile devices now! Yet, the performance of the game on Steam Deck is a decisive head above these other handheld platforms, running at a flawless 60 frames per second no matter what’s happening on screen. Additionally, the Deck’s vivid OLED screen means you can fully appreciate the highly detailed, beautiful art direction that the game is known for, including the ridiculously hot characters. 

The roguelike nature of Hades is also perfectly suited to the Steam Deck with each runthrough of the underworld taking about half an hour, making it an endlessly fun game to boot up and play when you don’t have too much time on public transport. 

Elden Ring

Elden Ring is undoubtedly one of the greatest games of all time – like Baldur’s Gate 3, it swept up practically every Game of the Year award when it came out and received near-universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike. The action RPG lets you get lost in the unforgiving fantasy world of The Lands Between hundreds of years after the very order of the world was shattered.

Both Elden Ring and its expansion Shadow of the Erdtree are highly acclaimed for their tough combat and sprawling open worlds, but an underrated element of the game are its surprising queer themes. You’ve got characters who fluctuate between traditionally male and female personas, several endings allowing two women to get married and the choice to defy the religious fundamentalism that ruined these lands to begin with.

To explore this seemingly never-ending world on the Deck is nothing short of remarkable. At Medium settings, the game still looks absolutely phenomenal and runs better than you’d expect, though for the most consistent experience I’d recommend locking the game to 30 frames per second. If you don’t mind some variance, though, you can hit up to the sweet spot of 40 regularly.  

Control: Ultimate Edition

The world of Control is a wonderfully weird one. Stepping into the boots of Jesse Faden, you find yourself inside the walls of the Federal Bureau of Control, a secret agency that investigates and handles paranatural events in the midst of an invasion by an otherworldly force known as The Hiss. 

Developed by Remedy Entertainment, Control is a tightly-constructed shooter with incredible, horror-tined vibes that sees you seize… well, control over a number of incredible abilities like telekinesis and levitation. Though not a game with explicitly queer themes, Remedy have managed to cultivate a very strong queer fanbase online who love to discuss their ongoing connected universe project.

Control is a perfect entry point to see what this storytelling project has to offer, and it’s a great experience on Steam Deck. You can keep the texture quality on High and set everything else to Low to keep the game running at a solid 40 frames per second, which is more than enough for the fast-paced run & gun nature of the game. 

Resident Evil 4 (2023)

I’ll admit, Resident Evil 4 doesn’t have any overtly queer themes or characters, but it’s here a few reasons: it runs great on the Steam Deck, it’s an excellent game and few characters get people as hot and bothered as Leon Kennedy. 

And why wouldn’t he? Sent on a solo mission to save the President’s daughter from the clutches of a parasite-ridden cult, Leon shoots, kicks and backflips his way through a rural Spanish village in Resident Evil 4 and looks damn good while doing it. 

And by good, I mean in terms of graphical fidelity, of course… At Medium settings and with FSR turned to Quality, Resident Evil 4 runs between 30-40 frames per second consistently, allowing you to pop heads and parry chainsaws to your heart’s content. The fact that you can play this incredible game on-the-go is a sincere technological achievement. 

Where can I buy a Steam Deck?

We’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible with the Steam Deck here today, so if your curiosity is piqued you can find them for sale on Steam with three different models available. The 256GB model with an LCD screen costs $649, the 512GB OLED model costs $899, and the 1TB OLED costs $1,049.