There’s no denying that Valve’s Steam Deck is quite the nifty piece of kit, allowing players the chance to enjoy the vast majority of their Steam library while on the go. We’ve already ranked some of the best titles you can play on your Steam Deck, which includes games like Hades, Vampire Survivors and Dead Cells. All those games feel like they’re ready made for the handheld platform, but those are all well known titles that rely on action. If you’re looking for something that’s lesser known and a tad more relaxing, you need to give Dorfromantik a shot.
A mix between a puzzle game and a town-builder, Dorfromantik, which is also available on the Nintendo Switch, has become the Steam Deck title of choice at Cultured Vultures HQ, thanks to its easy to learn yet hard to master gameplay and overall chilled out vibes. Having been recommended and subsequently gifted the game by head honcho Jimmy, I tried it thinking it’d be a fun distraction for half an hour before moving back to the regularly scheduled plan of emulating God Hand, but three hours later, I was hooked.
The premise of Dorfromantik is pretty simple – score the most points creating a rural society using only the 40 hexagonal tiles you have in your stack. These tiles will have different biomes on them, featuring any mix of water, housing, trees, farmland or railroads. In order to score points, you’ll have to place these tiles in a way where you can best match the sides of the hexagons with each other. If you manage to perfectly surround one tile, you’ll get a points bonus and a slight refill to your stack.
Occasionally, you’ll also be given quests to join so many pieces of a certain type together, either to exceed the target or hit the number dead-on. Completing these quests gives you lots of tiles back, so each play session is spent trying to figure out how best to use your current tile to advance your quests. The precision quests in particular are the most challenging, as you’ll often spend half the run waiting on a tile with just one field, only to be given a pesky double fielder. Then you’ll finally be given that one field tile, and you’ll use it elsewhere like an idiot.
It’s a classic puzzle game in that sense, as you’ll often begin to realise your mistakes just after you’ve made them, but once you’ve got a few runs under your belt, Dorfromantik begins to open up in its puzzle solving capabilities. Strategies begin to form from the get-go. “That side will be where the water goes, railroad on the other side” and so on. With each run, you’ll find yourself becoming more efficient, scoring more and more points and unlocking new tiles for subsequent sessions.
However, the real genius of Dorfromantik comes once you’ve finally finished a run by exhausting your tile stack, as you can then continue in Creative Mode. Here, you’re given an infinite stack of tiles that you can skip through to find the one that’s right for you, and get to work filling in any empty spaces on your board. As much as points are the main aim in Dorfromantik, there’s a charm in making your society look pretty too, and fooling around in the Creative Mode can be just as fulfilling as the main game.
One of the core selling points of the Steam Deck is its pick up and play nature, something that Dorfromantik is absolutely built around. If you’ve got a decent commute each day, you could easily spend that time on a regular run, or head into creative mode to try and make the best looking town ever. It might not have enough action for everyone, but as a change of pace or palette cleanser, Dorfromantik is utterly incredible.
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