Ask Lemmy

Celeste, the platformer, is one of my favorites, and it's super small.

i'd grab a lot of old game roms for emulator. nes/snes/gba/mame stuff are tiny in filesize. there are tons of gems in nds/psp too. maybe gc/wii/3ds stuff too, but they're significantly larger.

Abiotic factor

10gb, half life themed survival game. Extremely solid. The combat itself isn't too crazy, I think you could pull it off on steamdeck

Haven't seen anyone mention Slay the Spire yet. The original is under 600MB and the sequel (early-access) is 2GB. They're both good! The first one is maybe a little easier, if you've never played them.

I love Skald Against the black priory, and I've also started The wandering Village. Both well under that limit!

Outer Wilds is 8GB, and the best puzzle/mystery game I have ever played. The less you know about the game up front, the better.

Ostriv was under a gig last I checked. Incredible accomplishment. Beautiful little city/village builder based in Ukraine.

Balatro is tiny, like 150 MB tiny. And endlessly playable. If you like poker and/or rogue likes it's pound for pound one of the best deals out there both money and memory wise

Lot of my picks have already been mentioned but if you like story-rich point and clicks:
The rusty lake series (~1GB each)
Strange Horticulture (1GB)

Or very chill adventure:
Slime rancher (1GB)

Rouge-lite/rogue-like:
Death Road to Canada (60MB)
Binding of Isaac (449 MB) - this is my all time favourite game and I'm surprised to see the base game is still under $20.

I enjoy unique story driven games. Two favourites are:

• Papers, please. <100MB
• Do not feed the monkeys. <1GB

Honorary mention to Not tonight. It's very papers-inspired, but unique enough.

I have been playing Time Snatcher Handy recently, a roguelike centered around a time-stop mechanic, which only uses 44 MB. It is pretty good. Going through my steam library from the lowest up, here are the others i would recommend, stopping at one GB, because most of my games are under 20 GB and i tend to be relatively selective with what games i get so i consider most of them good also:

• TIS-100 (80 MB), programming puzzle game by Zachtronics
• Islanders (150 MB), minimalist city builder
• Enter the Gungeon (346 MB), bullet-hell roguelike
• Streets of Rogue (417 MB), roguelike which emphasizes having multiple possible approaches for how to get any given objective
• Opus Magnum (493 MB), another Zachtronics programming puzzle game
• Vault of the Void (554 MB), roguelike deckbuilder (one of my most played games, especially recommended)
• Backpack Hero (616 MB), roguelike focused on maximizing adjacency bonuses on your inventory grid
• Urbek City Builder (685 MB), city builder (obviously)
• Slipways (735 MB), a game about optimizing trade routes between planets
• Cassette Beasts (1 GB), similar to Pokemon, with the main differences being that you turn into the monsters instead of summoning them, type advantage/disadvantage giving unique status effects rather than just changing damage and battles generally being 2v2 instead of 1v1

Fields of Mistria is a cute farming game like Stardew Valley, and it’s only like 800MB.

If you havent yet played Portal / Portal 2, together they are about 20 Gigs, and are both very good, genre and generation defining games.

Balatro and Slay The Spire 2 are roguelikes that have a lot of replayability.

Trackmania, you can give it a shot with Nations Forever it's free on steam. Turbo/TM2 are graphically improved versions of it, 2020 is the newest one that most people play but has a lot of its features locked behind a yearly subscription. Go with the previous ones if offline play is a must.

Baba Is You is a real brain burner puzzle game that makes you think out of the box a lot of time.

Genre/type of game you like most?

My indie action platformer No More Mages is in early access (with a free demo) if you feel like taking a shot at a truly unknown game! More being added soon.

Factorio if you like building, optimizing and automating. Game is about 5 GB.