The Results Of Our 2024 Best Steam Deck Game Community Poll

If you haven't yet, follow us on X (Twitter), Mastodon, or Bluesky to know when we post new articles, and join our Reddit or Subscribe to us on YouTube to check out our content and interact with our awesome community. Thank you for supporting us!

2024 has been an amazing year for gaming in general, making it an even better year for the Steam Deck. So many new and awesome games were released this year, like Balatro, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero, and almost all critically acclaimed games have been playable on the go.

Since this is the end of the year, we wanted to see what games the community thought were the best this year, and while it served as part of gauging the nominees for our community voted Best Steam Deck Game for our Steam Deck Game Awards. Still, there were a lot of interesting findings for this that I wanted to share.

I started making a post on Reddit, Twitter/X, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and Discord about getting feedback on which 2024 game was the best to play on the Steam Deck. Reddit got the most responses, but there was solid feedback across the board and some interesting discussions about which game was the best one to play in 2024. There were also a lot of games that weren't released in 2024 that were suggested, even though I had specifically asked for 2024 releases, but I still found the findings very intriguing.

The most-voted game from the community across the board was Balatro, receiving a majority of the votes across all social media we posted on. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and Metaphor: ReFantazio were not far behind it, but there was still a clear difference. There was a bit more drastic drop, but UFO 50 came in fourth place, with Factorio in 5th!

Here are the top 15 games with their vote count:

• Balatro - 157
• Deep Rock Galactic Survivor - 103
• Metaphor: ReFantazio - 101
• UFO 50 - 76
• Factorio (2020) - 48
• Prince of Persia The Lost Crown - 30
• Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) - 26
• Persona 3 Reload - 26
• Ghost of Tsushima - 24
• Diablo 4 (2023) - 23
• Nine Sols - 22
• Fields of Mistria - 19
• Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance - 19
• Halo Master Chief Collection (2019) - 16
• Kingdom Hearts Collection - 16

Interestingly, almost half of the games in the top 15 weren't released in 2024. Kingdom Hearts, Shin Megami Tensei V, and Ghost of Tsushima were all originally released before this year, and while they are newly released PC/Steam versions, it is still interesting to see.

With how big Elden Ring is, I was surprised it just barely didn't get to the Top 15 (it was at number 16). Grounded and Dragon Quest 3 also got more votes than I expected, which is nice to see. There were about 144 different games that got votes, with a nice variety of new games, older games, AAA titles, indie, and everything in between. Even with a lot of games only getting one vote, it still showed a lot of interest in playing many different games on the Steam Deck.

It's hard to use this to try and pin down a trend, but I would say the indie titles still reign supreme on the Deck. People do want to play the bigger AAA titles, for sure, but it seems like the Deck still heavily favors indies.

You can check out the list I put together on Google Sheets, but it isn't the most organized right now. You can see the breakdown of likes/upvotes and individual comments depending on the game and which social media platform it was counted from.

If you enjoyed this article, check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.