https://www.empiresmod.com/

https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/empires-official-discord.20577/

(ughh yes most of the community is on discord what can you do but make fediverse posts…)

I want to recommend an oddball game here for a potential LAN steamdeck game or just a fun free multiplayer steam deck game in general (it has bots too).

I have mixed feelings about the Source engine, I mean obviously love it and all the games that came out on it, but it never did vehicles well partially from a handling perspective and also source engine level design always seemed to end up blocky and awkward for vehicles to manuever on.

Lots of games of course integrated vehicles successfully into their core gameplay, but the most successful mechanically and by far the most interesting in my opinion is the Empires Mod.

The really cool thing about this game is that the original release date was 2008, and yet it is still in development with a very small but loving fan base. The gunplay plays like a faster counter strike, very arcade-y and at the heart of it relatively simple but it works, it is fun and there is lots of skill to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCgoylOR1s0

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nNhQWZsIl_o

Here is some relatively recent gameplay showing how much depth and team strategy there is to Empires Mod. This game is like Natural Selection 2 or other games where each team has an RTS like commander and structures must be built to produce an engine that can take over the map from the enemy.

Check it out, the game looks janky in the way all lovable Source Engine games are but I think if you give it a chance you might find it really fun.

Also… there are a lot of mechanics to the game and they have really put a lottttt of effort into little tooltips that explain functions of the game everywhere to you. It is actually pretty slick even if the presentation is usually amateur, who cares the underlying game is cool as heck.

I found the default Steam Deck bindings worked great, I just recommend using gyroscope to help aim. I think source accepts gamepad input too, but I have just stuck with the default Steam Deck WASD & Mouse profile and it works already really well off the bat no tweaking for Empires Mod!

Needless to say, this game runs NO PROBLEM on the Steam Deck lol. I am not convinced the Source engine is obsolete, primarily because handhelds like the Steam Deck pose the question ok you can have better graphics but what are you trading it for? I think games like Empires Mod on the source engine deserve to be remembered and rediscovered on a new medium of devices!