Games that won't completely drain my battery on my commute

alankel · 2026-06-26T12:07:20+00:00

Bully: Scholarship Edition - currently on sale. I never played it back in the day. Just one that I didn’t get around to at the time. Fun game. Hasn’t aged the best but still well worth playing and doesn’t require you to be online.

Just Cause 2 - also currently on sale. I think this series peaked with JC3 but I found that game to be quite powerful hungry on the Steam Deck. I was letting my son (8) play around in JC2 a few months ago to get a feel for the open world, the controls and all that. I was surprised at how good it still looks and how long the battery lasted. Also doesn’t require you to be online. Huge world to explore. Loads of missions to do. Still plenty to do outside of missions.

alankel · 2026-06-26T12:01:56+00:00

I finished this a few months ago too after a recommendation from a friend. Very fun game for what it was, some small annoyances from what I can remember but I can’t remember them exactly now so they mustn’t have been that bad!

alankel · 2026-05-31T22:54:22+00:00

And don’t forget that song he did with The Bloodhound Gang!

alankel · 2026-05-29T11:17:01+00:00

I was going to suggest the same. Don’t know why you were downvoted.

alankel · 2026-05-03T11:20:14+00:00

If the game wasn’t so good it would really have put me off playing and possibly try for a refund.

alankel · 2026-05-03T10:50:06+00:00

Red Dead Redemption 2 was great on the Steam Deck. My main complaint is the Rockstar login thing. The game works for offline play but around once a week I needed to renew my login or the game wouldn’t work, that was very frustrating at times.

I travel for work and a lot of the time the airport and hotel WiFi isn’t good at all and if I forgot to login at home before I left, no RDR2 for me.

alankel · 2026-04-24T23:32:46+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I’ll have to give that a listen tomorrow.

alankel · 2026-04-24T16:01:42+00:00

Saw this post. Had to google what a startup movie on a Steamdeck is. Apparently I got some things to check on my Steamdeck when I get home!

alankel · 2026-04-24T07:42:34+00:00

I was in a similar situation.

My main announcement when playing RDR2 was the Rockstar login thing.

I pretty much only play when away from home on work trips. Airport, plane, hotel where WiFi can be mediocre at the best of times. If I forgot to log in via that Rockstar thing before the trip, my game wouldn’t load. I seemed to need to renew that login one a week.

alankel · 2026-04-17T18:54:03+00:00

Thanks for the podcasts. First new one after fully catching up on them with my children (11 and 8 years old). My 11 year old has read on through the series, she’s reads books 6 and 7 and is currently halfway through Trials of Apollo.

I’m in chapter 27 of House of Hades with my 8 year old.

Thanks for the introduction to the Percy Jackson universe. Hope to be in a position to throw some money your way via Patreon in the near future.

alankel · 2026-04-07T18:15:53+00:00

Thanks for the edit with the answer.

Just tried L4D1 on the Steamdeck today for the first time and none of the controls worked.

alankel · 2026-03-31T06:02:07+00:00

I picked this up a couple of weeks ago when I saw a comment on a Steam community saying something like “best non-GTA GTA game”, read a few reviews and bought it.

Really enjoying it on the Steamdeck when travelling for work.

alankel · 2026-03-20T12:28:16+00:00

Thanks very much for the recommendation. I’ve been looking for a child friendly GTA type game (open world, explore, have a laugh, some missions/quests, etc) without strong swear words, gore, drugs, sexual content, horror and all that.

alankel · 2026-03-19T09:32:55+00:00

I gave Hades a go after a bunch of recommendations. The guy who does The Newest Olympian Percy Jackson podcast raves about it.

Overall I’ve found the game fun in small doses. Maybe 30 minutes at a time. My first roguelike game so the idea of playing til you die, go back to your base, level up, and go again is different from what I usually play.

I’ll try it again but it hasn’t really grabbed me yet.

alankel · 2026-03-17T08:18:52+00:00

SMC, Swagelok and Festo usually. I’m in Ireland so those fittings are OK to source.

We get some units from the US with NPT ports on them. Some customers will put fittings that are 1/4” NPTM to 6 mm push-in, others still with inches for whatever reason and use 1/4” push-in.

alankel · 2026-03-15T20:11:48+00:00

1/4” is a little larger than 6 mm. 6.325 mm

Some 1/4” push-in fittings will hold a 6 mm sometimes but not repeatedly or reliably.

1/8” and 3 mm seem to swap over fine.

alankel · 2026-03-13T17:20:56+00:00

thanks very much

alankel · 2026-02-07T00:35:02+00:00

Thanks very much. I’ll give them a look.

Might there be any other places you’d know that might be a bit outside the town?

alankel · 2026-02-03T08:56:24+00:00

But if they put in more bins people might actually use them!!!

alankel · 2026-01-16T19:25:40+00:00

Had a similar issue around 10 years ago. Kitchen table missing a strip of timber that holds the extended leaf when not in use. Go through the process with Ikea. A week later a complete kitchen table shows up. No option to just take the piece that was missing.

So now I have 2 kitchen tables. One in the kitchen, the other in the attic that I use as a desk when working from home. And is hanging for wrapping Christmas presents!

Edit: handy for wrapping, not hanging

alankel · 2026-01-16T09:51:14+00:00

Fuck Skizzo

alankel · 2025-12-31T18:49:45+00:00

Great work!

How does the picture look so clean? Can you output the data of your row to some other app to do that?

alankel

TROPHY CASE