Slay the Spire is a deck mainstay for me. A good run is 40 minutes to an hour.
It is also pretty easy on battery
Stardew valley can get like 5-6 hours of battery easy on the steam deck
How about SNES or GBA emulation? For what it’s worth, many flights now have a power outlet between the seats
Seconding the emulation idea. Plenty of outstanding SNES games out there.
Chained Echoes. 16 bit RPG with great art and gameplay, but it's not hard on the battery and it has modern day QOL features.
100% support this. Feels like it was made for the deck. Gives me super big Game Gear vibes but like you said, with 2023 qol.
Emulating Gamecube games is pretty low-spec if you compile the shaders beforehand. Battery life nets 2-3 hours on flights for me (Steam Deck). I have nearly 2000 hours of Animal Crossing GC combined, pls don't judge me 😅.
Check out Celeste if you haven’t already. For me it’s the perfect 2D platformer and works really well on the deck. Think I clocked around 100 hours on it just on it alone!
Tunic, hades, dead cells, some old rpg like fallout nev vegas or fable
Pizza Tower is fun.
Stardew Valley would be my pick.
Bastion, Celeste, Hollow Knight, and Tunic are all great. I also really like emulation. I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom more on my Steam Deck than on my switch!
Most planes nowadays have a charging port where you can plug in your phone for the duration of the flight. Therefore, I recommend getting an emulator on your phone and playing games on it. Usually if I want something casual, I get an NDS emulator and play Pokemon Platinum or HGSS. Other recommendations are FFIV, Etrian Odyssey III, Shin Megami Tensei, DQ4, some of these are ports but they run well on DS emulator.
My personal experience (US) is that most airplanes have chargers nowadays. However, the charger is very loose, and I could never make my charger fixed in the socket.
If OP could find a good socket, then this lucky person could enjoy 5 hour gaming with no interruption :)
I might be talking out of my arse, but you could bring a toothpick with you and try removing any fluff/grime from the socket before plugging in. Worked for my phone when the usbc charger wasn't secure.
Hades was practically made for Steam Deck
Hades is great, but it's not very battery friendly for a 2d game in my experience.
You can turn on practically all the power saving features and it still runs great. I haven't timed it, but it can go on pretty long.
Baba is You can last for over 6 and a half hours - the longest battery life I've ever seen on my Deck. You just need to enable the minimum TDP limit.
I also believe Brotato lasts a lot, Pixross too.
Play some factorio. You'll play it forever.
The factory must grow
I'm not.OP, but will also be on a long flight with steam deck soon. I keep hearing about Factorio and I think it's time to push the button.
Controls are more mouse/kb oriented, but there are a LOT of players that game on steam deck.
The factory must grow
I first played on kb/m, and was skeptical about using a controller. It works great though.
Dead cells
If you prefer some story-heavy games, you can try Eastward. It has gorgeous art style and controls and UI are a great fit for handheld devices such as Deck and Switch. It takes ~15% battery a hour and can be completed in 10 to 15 hours.
If you're fine with longer games which will take 45-70 hours total, try some 2D JRPGs like Trails in the Sky FC (which also has nice touch input in menus!), Trails from Zero and Chained Echoes. All tree aren't battery-heavy at all.
Dunno if it's your jam, but I just picked up Dead Cells and it's super light weight power wise. Also, retro emulation is usually pretty good on the battery. Get Emudeck going and some GB or GBA games and have a blast.
Portal!
Cat quest will take you about 5 hours to beat and is light to run. Streets of Rogue is good too.
I don't know how draining Celeste was, but it can't be too much. Most indie games probably work.
Terraria plays really well IMO
Rogue Legacy. Good game, replayability, doesn't drain the batt
Dredge Dredge Dredge!!!! GOTY for me personally. And I'm normally a desktop pc gamer.
Tough to give anything concrete without preferences but I'll toss out a few. Chronicon is a great ARPG that's easy on the battery due to simple graphics (don't let them fool you). Voxelgram is 3d picross, if that happens to be your thing. Dicey Dungeons is a dice based roguelite that's totally full of charm.
Star Traders: Frontiers on Android. Space trading rpg with depth and story. A bit grindy bit there's so many paths to take it can suck up hours (mind you it's difficult and you will die permadeths with many characters, it's mind boggling how many ways there are to succeed, just many more ways to fail too. Great way to spend a five hour flight.
If you're flying commercial, you should be able to charge your steam deck while you fly.
I found civ5 was great to play when i when on a 4 hour flight.
FTL, Into the Breach, and Slay the Spire are mostly puzzle games -- but since they're roguelikes they have a little depth. Depends on what you mean.
I find them very replayable but I like puzzle games because I have bad hands and game controllers are not an option.
As for puzzles Baba is you is great
They have a little depth
I have well over 1000 hours on slay the spire across PC and Mobile. It has ALL the depth. Same for FTL.
Slay especially is insanely compelling since there is no time pressure.
Emulated systems such as GameCube or psx work well on a long flight and you can have a lot of roms to suit the mood and can keep the tdp fairly low. Like 5 or 6
You could get Idol Showdown. It’s a 100% free fighting game that’s only 200 MB. It might not be the only game you’d want to take along though.
Valheim, Satisfactory, Factorio, Fable, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, Super Meat Boy,
I just 100%’d Path of Giants. Very relaxing and cute puzzle game that can kill 2 - 3 hours.
Been loving Gato Roboto, cute goofy mech metroidlike where you play as a cat driving mechs around a metroid style dungeon/base crawl.
I get 4 ish hours emulating the switch version of diablo 3. Easy to sink that much time or more into it
Not sure if it's the type of game you play, but Terraria has a lot more depth than people think, and it (should) be really light on your battery
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