You can’t build a game studio without funding, and that is where the problem lies…

Publishers have become very risk-averse ever since Embracer went downhill. They basically only invest in <literally the same game as some previously successful title>…

I would rather not waste money on a Windows license I am not going to use.

(Not that I would buy an Ally, I already have a SteamDeck.)

According to Steam, I spent most hours this year playing Book of Hours. (The word “Hours” is in the name of the game, so what choice did I have?) It is an amazing game, and I recommend it to anyone who likes cozy games with lots of lore to explore.

However, there is one game that I must confess I had even more fun with, even though it’s relatively short: The Pristine Cut of Slay the Princess.
I can’t really say much about it other than that it’s a horror visual novel with excellent voice acting and incredibly good writing, as almost any detail of the game’s story would be a spoiler.

(Edit: I know, both of those games released last year, but the question was about which Steam Replay and which games one had fun with this year - not about games that released this year.)

I did play a lot of of HoMaM back in the days - and also just recently installed VCMI on my PC, in order to re-play HoMaM 3. I didn’t start with that though - too many other games to play in my backlog… I never tried any mods - I don’t even know if the modding scene already existed back in the 90s, when I originally played it. I must confess that I prefer HoMaM 4 over HoMaM 3 - it feels a bit more complex.

There is one game series that is quite similar to Heroes of Might and Magic, that I personally love, and that gets the “fun all the times” and “100 hours play time” easily for me, but I didn’t mention it before because the current iterations are way above $10: Dominions. I haven’t bought Dominions 6 yet because of the size of my gaming backlog, but I have had a lot of fun with Dominions 4 and 5.

The way I understood it was that she did not loose her ability to use magic, but rather decided not to use it any more after what happened when she had to draw power from fire.

Even if it would be a bit disappointing, I think an explanation as simple as “she grew older, and had a lot more time to deal with the trauma of what happened in the desert” would be sufficient to explain why she is OK with using magic again.

Tough question.

Of all the games I have played, only few have 100 hours playtime, and all of them are over $10 except for

• Dwarf Fortress. However, I would have to lie if I said that it is constantly fun. There are gameplay mechanics that are boring, like the labour management (though that got vastly improved in version 50.x).

I do have one game suggestion though that is consistently fun all the time, and costs less than $10 - however I have less than 100 hours on it, because I never looked into the user-generated levels:

• TIS-100. It’s a puzzle/programming game by Zachtronics (so it’s in the Zach-like genre by definition), and it is amazing. Also, as said, there are user-generated levels, so even after you finish the main campaign, there’s a vast selection of puzzles to solve.
• Baba is You would go in a similar direction, but misses the $10 price point (by a tiny bit).

As someone who is curious about how they are going to explain the lore (in case you haven’t read the books: Ciri forswore magic after she had to draw power from fire in an emergency situation and that nearly escalated - also, you are missing out, the books are great), I feel offended by your statement.

I have to second what xavier666 said. Use it as-is, at least for some time.

The only thing I would recommend is, that if you plan to play a lot of non-Steam games, it might be worth to enable SFTP access, so you can copy games from your PC over WLAN: https://handheld.quest/posts/how-to-ssh-steam-deck/
(just beware to not have it enabled while in a public WLAN - or at least disable password-based login)

Oh, and in case you want to play DOS games, I’ve written a short guide on how to configure DosBOX staging in order to get MIDI music working: https://www.grois.info/posts/2023-02/2023-02-02-dosbox-with-midi-on-the-steam-deck.xhtml