An Ode to Session Games & Steam Deck

Growing up with the PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Color and Advance as my primary gaming systems dramatically shaped the way I play video games.

The Game Boy was the perfect on-the-go gaming beast, building my appreciation for casual, turn-based games that allow me to move at my own pace – mainly Pokemon – from a very young age, as well as tiny games that didn’t make huge demands (both of the hardware and of me when playing them). I took my Game Boys with me everywhere from age 5 onward. Car rides, waiting for each passing street lamp to get a glimpse at what I was doing, waiting in line or at doctor’s offices, road trips, stays at grandparents’… even school! My Game Boy and I were inseparable.

The PlayStation 2, on the other hand, was a magical world of home TV gaming with great graphics and sound, split-screen supported by so many games, and a massive library of varied and experimental titles.

The ones I remember most, however, are the session games. SSX, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Gauntlet, ATV Offroad Fury, Warriors games, Tekken, Dragon Ball Z Budokai 3, Need for Speed, Champions of Norrath and Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance – plus continuing to replay the Crash Bandicoot and Crash Team Racing games via the wonderful PS1 backwards compatibility. The PS2 was the ULTIMATE session game machine. Games that you could quickly hop in and out of, have a good time, make a little progress towards something, but not feel like you have to target finishing anything.

There were plenty of great story games on the system, too – but with my restricted game time and sharing of the console with my family, session games were how I got my real game time in when I could.

It took me a couple years to really figure out how it fit into my life and truly appreciate it – but the Steam Deck has become a top-tier session game experience for me. A portable handheld, just like my Game Boys as a kid, but with the power to run just about any game, it’s a beast.

I prefer to play big story or visual masterpiece games at my PC or on the TV with a console, but those smaller games – the ones I reach for when I just want to hop in and out quickly between tasks, right before bed, or waiting on an appointment for my kiddo – those are what the Steam Deck is best at.

These games are smaller, which usually means they take up less disk space and run smoother on the lower powered hardware in the Deck. Plus the suspend and resume feature on the Deck means I have the freedom to hop in and out with even less friction than I’ve ever had before.

The Deck has enabled me to explore swaths of new, small games that I never would have made time for before. It’s also allowed me to accrue dozens upon dozens of hours of game time that I otherwise didn’t have room for in my busy dad-life.

Rogue-likes are the obvious one that come to mind – and there’s a reason the genre is so saturated right now. My original Vampire Survivors addiction is what earned the Steam Deck a permanent place in my weekly routines, and after 50-ish hours, I’ve only kept going from there.

Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel quickly became an obsession of mine once I picked it up, eating up all of my game time in October – and they just put out a huge new content update to pull me right back in. As a Vampire Survivors meets Diablo, this viking-style survivors game has sick graphics, great character variety, and endlessly addicting ability combos. It is a pretty intense game, with a 45FPS target being the best I could squeeze out of the Deck.

WARRIORS: Abyss is more of a Hades-like taking the best of Dynasty and Samurai Warriors heroes and putting them through four layers of Hell to try to put and end to a demon set on destroying everything. Over a hundred characters all play a bit differently, allowing you an insane amount of potential playtime if you want to unlock them all, while providing an easy gateway back into a Musou obsession for me. Plus the pared back visuals means it tends to run at a locked 60FPS with its Steam Deck-optimized profile.

Sektori is a visual overstimulation blender, a bullet hell roguelike with some pretty challenging boss battles and addicting twin stick shooting action. I’m still struggling to make it through the bosses effectively, but I can’t seem to put it down lately.

Noobs Are Coming very much resembles Newgrounds games I’d play on school computers – Flash games being another formative form of gaming that kept me hooked on session games, by the way – that takes your typical Survivors-style game and reverses it – where you play as the boss as raids of players try to take you down.

Roguelikes aren’t the only games I get to drown myself in on Deck. Lots of other smaller games are thoroughly worth my time.

Monster Sanctuary combines Pokemon with Metroid for a beautiful creature collector platformer with loads of style.

The Lady Dracula demo helped me realize that I don’t actually care too much for Metroidvanias overall, and much prefer the more classic Castlevania style of gameplay.

Coromon, Nexomon and TemTem are all great Pokemon alternatives that keep the more classic spirit of older-gen Pokemon games alive, and I go through waves of obsessing over these.

TMNT: Splintered Fate might just be the most faithful Hades-like I’ve ever played, with a really addictive loop and a solid roster to play as with added DLC. Play as the turtles and some friends as you try to rescue Master Splinter and travel between dimensions.

Of course, there’s Hades itself, which I put many hours into while waiting at airports.

Do I need to say anything about Balatro?

Mullet MadJack is a very unique boomer shooter crossed with a roguelike where you make runs through cyberpunk megastructures trying to beat bosses and rescue princesses. The game oozes 80s and 90s themes and references out of every pixel, and is absolutely worth a play.

None of this to mention that all of those PS2 session games I love are just wonderful to play on Steam Deck, as well, via PCSX2.

While I do enjoy big story games and blockbuster experiences, I rarely have time for them. Whether I was a kid with responsible limitations placed on my play time, a young adult in college and working multiple jobs, or a busy dad – session games are the biggest way I’m actually able to get any game time in most of the time. And it’s truly thanks to the Steam Deck that I’m able to take advantage of these in a myriad of situations where I normally wouldn’t be able to just sit at my PC and game.

I don’t have a long commute, as I work from home. I don’t spend a lot of time waiting places. I have a stupid amount of gaming hardware available to me – so I never really thought the Steam Deck was for me. Then I wound up pre-ordering it out of FOMO on the second or third wave of pre-orders.

And honestly? It went months at a time without being used, and I had to make conscious efforts to keep it charged, updated, and actually use it. But once I got hooked on Vampire Survivors and started installing more session games on there – I use it nearly every day now.