11+ Great Steam Deck Games That Won’t Drain Your Battery

Right now, The Master Chief Collection is the premiere Halo experience on Xbox and PC, full stop, and it runs damn near flawlessly on the Steam Deck. As Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 came out in the early 2000s, these games are a cakewalk for the Steam Deck, with one major, huge, essential caveat: use classic graphics if you’re trying to save battery life. Playing this way, you can expect a solid three to four hours (if not more) on these games, especially Combat Evolved.

Actually, as far as Halo: Combat Evolved is concerned, you should always use the classic graphics as the newer ones—pretty as they are—have such different artistic direction that it robs the game of its original character and charm. Both Halo: CE and Halo 2 let you flip between the two graphical presentations with a press of the View (select) button. But you can also set the audio and visuals to the classic mode in the campaign launch menu.

In my experience, Halo 3, ODST, Reach, and Halo 4 push the battery a little too much to be fully recommended for Steam Deck play. They all run great on the Deck, but not for super long. So if you’ve got time to kill, shootin’ at the Covenant through the first two entries of this series ought to do the trick.

If you want a solid, meaty RPG, Final Fantasy X will give you a tearjerker of a story with at least four or five hours of Steam Deck play time. Final Fantasy X-2, which is very different in tone but still a great game, will also work out well. As a note, the game selection screen doesn’t seem to respond to the d-pad or analog stick, so just use the touch screen (I suspect this launcher is what has kept this game out of Verified status). Final Fantasy XII should also land you in the four- to five-hour range.

I spend at least four months out of every year realizing that Final Fantasy VIII really was the best Final Fantasy on PSX, and thankfully it scores an easy five to six hours on the Deck—just make sure you’re playing the Remastered version (why the old version of FF8 is still on Steam is beyond me…). The old version not only isn’t supported, but has horrible, very bad, no good, wretched versions of this excellent soundtrack.

Sadly, other classic chapters like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX don’t work terribly well on the Deck. Obviously the Steam Deck should be able to power through these games, but right now certain selection screens make them unplayable, even if they do run on the Deck. We’ll update here should that change.

The Hades-like that caught my attention late last year, Lone Ruin hovers dangerously close to that three-hour mark, but is a bit kinder to the Steam Deck’s battery than Hades. (That said, I’ve read online reports of folks getting better playtimes with Hades; as with all things Steam Deck, your mileage may vary.)

Though Lone Ruin doesn’t have a literally award-winning story like that other game, it’s so directly engaging, with such a hypnotic soundtrack and wonderfully lurid visuals, not to mention gripping “gotta-play-it-again” gameplay, Lone Ruin is an excellent time killer, and one that’ll give you a fair amount of time on the Deck’s battery.

If you’ve played last year’s sweet endless wave hit, Vampire Survivors, then you know it’s entirely possible to sink an extraordinary number of hours into it. A popular title on r/SteamDeck, it’s as fun and engaging to play as it is light on the battery. Expect a solid four, if not more, hours on this. Games like Vampire Survivors are meant to melt time away, and it makes for a great Deck companion on a long trip.

Signalis must’ve been made by time travelers from the late ‘90s. It has that original PlayStation charm I only grow more nostalgic over each year, and it’s a really great horror game too. Now, the lo-fi visuals ought to make you think “this should last for days on the Deck!” but it can dip below three hours, which isn’t optimal. Fortunately, there’s a quick fix: Turn Reflections off in the settings. That should easily give you another hour of gametime…if you’re not too scared, that is.

Neon White just barely made the cut. In my tests, it was one of the only games here to start out with a battery estimate of just under three hours, maybe a little more. Still, an average of three hours of playtime ain’t bad, and Neon White is such a good game that I’m kinda giving it a pass here. And if you follow some of our battery best practices tips at the end, you should get a respectable amount of time running this game.

Neon White is also an exceptional portable experience. With tight, focused levels, it’s great for quick rides on trains and buses. The lower battery life might make it not the optimal choice for a long plane trip, but quick commutes should see multiple plays of Neon White without needing to charge the battery too often.

Say you find yourself on a pleasant farm with no electricity, but you do have a fully charged Steam Deck. Well, if Stardew Valley is installed on your Deck, you’re looking at six to seven hours of gametime. Honestly, maybe even eight! Seriously, the ever-delightful, blissful farming sim that is one of the many must-install games we’ve talked about before is one of the kindest to your Deck’s battery.

The world sim to rule them all, Dwarf Fortress typically delivers about four or five hours on the Steam Deck, if not more. There’s a lot of complexity, maybe too much, going on in this game, but that doesn’t stop the Steam Deck from going long after you’ve watched multiple civilizations of yours bite the dust…or maybe that’s just a me problem.

While Dwarf Fortress is fully playable on the Steam Deck and launches with a very accommodating set of controls, the text can be quite small. Steam button + L1 is going to be your best friend here.

Another one of our must-install PC games, expect upwards of five-plus hours of delightful hack ‘n slash shenanigans with Dead Cells on the Steam Deck. Hell, tweak a few settings and you’re approaching the Deck battery’s maximum eight-hour lifespan. A solid, time-tested modern classic, Dead Cells ought to be on everyone’s Deck. And it takes up less than two gigs!

Look, they’re gonna take my LGBTQ card away from me if I don’t start including this game more often. Celeste is yet another excellent battery sipper. We’re looking at around five to six hours spent climbing mountains and thinking about identity (perhaps more if you tweak the refresh rate on the Deck a bit).

As a modern classic, if you haven’t played Celeste yet, you’re doing yourself a disservice. And if you have played it, play it another time. What’re you waiting for?

What do you mean there were Doom games after 1997?

If you want a true Doom experience and are looking to fill a five- to six-hour time slot without stopping to charge, then Doom II is the way to go. And yes, I am referring to the regular version you buy on Steam. I imagine that running an engine of your choice with the original WAD will likely result in similar battery times, but the more stuff you tack on, the more the battery life is likely to diminish. When you consider that you’re already starting with such a high estimate, there’s probably some room to muck about with mods anyway.

Doom 64 also gets a shoutout here as having more than five hours of battery life. You need to log in to play this one though…so uh, maybe take a shower after playing or something, because it just feels gross. Thanks, Bethesda.

Firing up this classic FPS never gets old. Half-Life 2’s physics were really a sight to behold back when the game launched in 2004, and they still feel impressive. Now, you can experience the whole ride on the Steam Deck with about four to five hours of battery life. The soft-sequel Episodes that follow might chew into the battery life a little bit more as they’ve got some fancier visuals, but in general Half-Life 2 makes for an excellent and long-lived experience on the Deck.

Lately RetroArch has been eating up all my Steam Deck time, and thankfully I’m able to go for long stretches before the battery dies. As a general rule of thumb, if you’ve got a bunch of retro ROMs burning a hole in your SSD (I don’t need to know how you got ‘em), then it’s time to get to work chewin’ through them on Steam Deck.

My recent experience has mostly been on NES games, where I typically get a solid five hours while running shaders (specifically the excellent Mega Bezel Reflection Shader). Tweaks to shader settings, cutting features like reflections for example, ought to give you more battery life.

If you long for PlayStation 2- and Xbox 360-era games, and can find them on Steam (there are quite a few), the Steam Deck is going to have no problem keeping you entertained for a while.

Generally speaking, games from the 2000s seem to be very kind to the Steam Deck’s battery, and some early 2010-era games aren’t too rough either, especially if you drop the framerate to 30 (which is honestly what those games usually ran at on consoles anyway). Examples include Fallout: New Vegas, Dishonored, Vanquish and Skyrim, to name a few.

There are some exceptions. For example, I noted that the Master Chief Collection’s Halo 3 drains the battery a little far beyond what I’d feel comfortable with on a long train ride.

The Steam Deck is a very hacker-friendly device, with tons of settings directly accessible. But you don’t need a computer science degree to set your Steam Deck up for optimum battery life.

As mentioned earlier, the battery estimate on the Steam Deck is fairly accurate. I’d wager there’s a discrepancy of plus or minus 15 minutes with what the Deck tells you is left. Again, this is highly dependent on multiple factors. In particular, make sure you get into the actual game itself when checking estimates. It’s not uncommon to see a five-hour estimate in the main menu, only for it to drop to just one or two hours when running a graphically intensive game.

Generally speaking, battery-saving techniques as we’ve all learned them on smartphones also apply to the deck: Low brightness, volume, few-to-no bluetooth devices connected, and killing the Wi-Fi all ought to give you some more battery breathing room. Add to that shutting off vibration in the Steam Deck’s controls and killing input from things you’re not using, like the touchpads, for instance, might also help. Vibration and Steam Haptics can be found by pressing the Quick Access (…) button and navigating to the gear icon.

Beyond that, hitting the Quick Access button and navigating to the battery icon will reveal some performance settings worth checking out. On average, ratcheting the framerate down to 30 can make some games that otherwise hit two hours jump to at least three if not more. You can also drop the refresh rate to 40, set the framerate to match, and enjoy a nice middle ground between 30 and 60, with improved battery life across the board.

(Note that messing with the framerate can be a disaster for retro games (especially on RetroArch), so for old- school vibes, it’s best to keep it at 60—which you should be anyway.)

And while this isn’t necessarily a battery tip, if you’re looking at a long trip on which you plan to be without an internet connection for a while, be sure to test out all of your games in offline mode a good three days before you leave. That should give you enough time to verify that the games you wish to play will do just fine without the Deck needing to phone home.

Finally, if you know what you’re doing, adjusting the thermal power limit (TDP) and manual GPU clock can also dramatically boost battery life. If those terms scare you, forget about this entirely.

The Steam Deck’s battery life is one of its most commonly critiqued aspects. While future versions of the Deck are likely to improve in this area, you can definitely make the existing battery go a long way with the right games and these best practices.