Satisfactory sucked up about 3 months of my time and thinking about it as I type this I really want to start a new play through.

You might check out some of the different game bundles available right now, they can quickly give you a lot of good games to play for cheap.

One month of humble choice ($15) will get you Nine Sols, Like a Dragon Gaiden, Streets of Rage 4, and a bunch of other games.

Fanatical has a ton of build a bundle available right now for their winter sale. Of those bundles, the Prestige, Best of Platinum, Winter SuperStars, and Play on the Go bundles are all especially recommendes.

CP2077 is a great game! Runs really well on the deck. But so is the Witcher 3 which also runs really well on the deck! Personally cp2077 would be the one I pick.

If you have a little extra money and want to tinker a bit, you can install Decky and the plugins Power Tools, Decky LSFG-VK from decky and Lossless Scaling from the steam store. Decky LSFG-VK needs Lossless Scaling to work and I think it is around 5 bucks. With the above installed you can get around 100 fps in both cp2077, The Witcher 3 and many other games. I haven't found a game that these plugins dont work on and increase performance and playability albeit at the cost of battery drain.

I hope you many happy hours of gaming on your new deck. I really love mine!

@TheMinions
Hades & Hades II

I got a lot of mileage off my SD with Steamworld games, and they are very cheap right now : SteamWorld Essentials

And if you're in the mood for puzzle platformers, the Trine games run beautifully : Trine: Ultimate Collection

Megabonk, Balatro, or Cyberpunk are my rotation. Hunt those steam sales

Not sure what games you like, but I will suggest Terraria to almost anyone. 50% of currently on steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/105600/Terraria/

Hades is a great roguelite and is on sale for $9.75CAD right now. If you like that then there's also Hades 2. It has a really cool story built into it which at least at the time was more unique in the genre.

Try to find slightly older games and they'll have steeper discounts.

Lies of p, wildermyth, silksong, divinity original sin 2, caves of qud, persona 5 royal, baldurs gate 3

If you’re on a budget, make sure to redeem the weekly free games from Epic and Amazon if you have Prime. You can play them all on your deck via Heroic Games Launcher.

Doom (2016) or Doom  Eternal. Both fantastic games, run on anything and I saw Doom Eternal on sale foe 10%.

Tactical Breach Wizards!!! Then save the other $40ish for the next sale.

Axiom verge and ori bundles are great

Oxygen not included

Factorio

These two will consume your life for so long and they're both on sale :D

The Messenger is cheap right now and such a good platformer!

Maybe list games you have enjoyed in the past ? So we can suggest games more tailored to your interests.

I also was gifted a Humble Bundle game for Batman Arkham Knight.

Then perhaps redeem the game and complete the bundle at https://store.steampowered.com/sub/320795/ to play Arkham Asylum first?

Honestly at that price point I'd pick up a few cheap but addictive games like balatro and into the breach

Hades 2 is absolutely amazing as well

If you must get something from Steam, I'd get something with great time by price ratio, like Terraria, Starbound and Stardew Valley. Or also JRPGs like Final Fantasy XII.

But from your picks, Elden Ring is the one I'd go for, mostly because it's the one that picks my attention the most.

Otherwise, maybe you'd want to follow giveaway communities and alert profiles, e.g. here on the fediverse?

If you have another console, there are some ways to stream from them that I think are worth mentioning to pad out what you can do on the go.

In steam there's an app called xbplay, it's a few bucks but it made the process of streaming from an Xbox pretty simple for me, so i found it worth it.

Not in steam, but easy enough to set up (and free) is chiaki-ng, that's for Playstation.

If you have some time for setup and obtaining the games, emudeck is good for playing old games from systems all the way up to Xbox and ps2 (ish). Though i use it for older ones.

If you like those vampire survivor games they all run great on the deck and are usually cheap (vampire survivor, megabonk, brotato, deep rock galactic survivor)

Rocket league

From there, maybe something older you never played, it'll probably be on sale. Maybe dead rising 1 or 2, serious Sam or doom. Speaking of doom, that similar Warhammer 40k game boltgun is 60% off at the moment.

If you haven't already got it, Hades

• Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana
• Ys X: Nordics

They look terrible, but are incredible stories and were optimized for Steam Deck. Ys I & II Chronicles also plays great and are fun, though even the remakes feel older. Other Ys games are also fun.

Age of Mythology Retold I think played well and had good controls despite being an RTS.

Halo Master Chief Collection seems to do pretty decent. I played through Reach and most of the first game at least for the single player and enjoyed it.

American Truck Simulator is surprisingly fun and the studio puts ridiculous effort into optimizing for Steam Deck.

Other fun games I've played a lot on Steam Deck:

• Just Cause 2
• Overlord 1, Raising Hell, & 2
• Warhammer Inquisitor Martyr
• Gas Guzzlers Extreme
• Warhammer Space Marine (the original)
• Sniper Ghost Warrior 1 & 2 (1 has not aged well but was still fun)
• Saints Row the Third (the original)
• A good amount of Lego games
• Pinball FX3
• Fortix
• Far Cry 2
• Viking Battle for Asgard (no cloud save, be careful and back up game saves)
• The Saboteur (probably one of the greatest forgotten gems of the PS3/X360 era, I think it required minor tweaking to run on Steam Deck)
• Broforce/Expendabros
• Sir Whoopass
• Hustler
• Dungeons of Sundaria
• Shadows Awakening
• Awesome Pea
• Bears, Vodka, Balalaika!
• Disfigured
• Bayonetta
• Redeemer
• Blasphemous
• Parking Garage Rally

I got Overgrowth a few days ago for my Deck and it is very fun, especially when it only cost 6€ to get it

Get UFO 50 and get 50 games in one.

I've had great fun with Jedi Fallen Order and Hollow Knight / Silksong

There's already a very long list of excellent suggestions , so I'm going to chip in and add only two others. Tunic and Tinykin. Both are Deck verified and on sale right now.

I hate using a joystick for camera control, so I only play 2d titles on my deck. Mostly DRG: Survivor, Tribal Hunter (no, really. It is excellent), and Hades.

BG3 is another good bet too.

Biy Sleeping Dogs, it plays great on the steam deck and its now 85% down to 3 euros.

Great story, graphics still hold up.

Furthermore consider Distance (Race like game), the precinct, hot brass, coromon.

My favorites on the Steam Deck so far are Marvel Cosmic Invasion (arcade style Beat 'em Up) and Deep Rock Galactic Survivor.

I would look at indie games like nobody saves the world and look for all the emulators and roms I could get my filthy mitts on.

If you don't have it yet I would spend some of that money on a few months worth at least of mulvad VPN. It would... Open some doors.