It would be nice, yes, if Steam had options to keep the virtual keyboard permanent (and maybe they do?), but it looks like those things have Bluetooth so someone could get one of those cheapo tiny Bluetooth keyboards and they are good to go.

I imagine the technology behind the Steam Deck is similar to the Steam Link. I played through the entirety of Thaumistry on my TV last year just because I could, heh

This is what it looks like. Phone picture. The picture was taken with a phone and does not represent me as an artist.

Oh, Cursed Castila, the Ghosts n' Goblins-inspired platformer, was made for the thing.

Other thoughts:

Games that work great on it: Super Blood Hockey, Gravitar: Recharged and the Pac-Man Museum thing. I always wondered why I bought the same MAME games over and over again and the thumb sticks on the Steam Deck work FLAWLESSLY with Namco's official Pac-Man stuff.

Gravitron does not work. :(

Tetris Effect is fine, looks and plays nice. I'm downloading Pinball Arcade to see if I might have a portable Twilight Zone pin thing.

Hadean Lands seems to have the virtual keyboard pop back up on its own.

It looks like saving a game on Cryptozookeeper doesn't work and locks up. I'll try Thaumistry / Edge of Chaos soon.

Zork from the Zork anthology does the same thing I see for Cryptozookeeper, where ya gotta enable the virtual keyboard after each turn. Finally, we are on equal footing.

I got my developer copy of the Steam Deck*! I did try Jay Schilling's Edge of Chaos and I have some good news - it boots and you can read text and, by using a menu to bring the virtual keyboard up, you can type commands.

The bad news is that the virtual keyboard disappears after you hit enter. So you'd need to press (physical) buttons to enable it for each move.

I will try other text adventures that I have on Steam with the Steam Deck shortly.


* By that I mean I signed up a year ago as soon as it was announced and got it like every other commoner in order of when my order was placed.