I'd highly suggest sticking with Inscryption, it's very worth the investment. You can explore the room as well, and get more cards from solving puzzles in the room.
I've been playing a lot of No Man's Sky, but just picked up Shadows of Doubt and have been having a blast with that.
Shadows of Doubt has a weird bug ~~where loading into the initial menu takes several minutes instead of a few seconds.~~ Edit: Update came out today that fixed this! Haven't figured out why yet, but the developer is working on a fix and the game runs pretty decently outside of that. Using a community control scheme is recommended because the default controller scheme leaves something to be desired.
I used to live in Albuquerque, and I miss the scenery a lot. Truly a beautiful state.
By default the app is just a terminal with an on-screen keyboard. Packages installed and run through it are normally terminal only, although there is some amount of support for connecting to a separate app that runs an x server.
There are several other projects that download arm Linux distributions, and install them inside termux to get a full desktop going though. Normally for these you actually interact with the desktop through a VNC client connected to a localhost VNC running on the Linux distro. A VNC client is a good way to handle accessing the desktop since most of them come with a lot of UI design/polish for controlling a desktop computer via a phone screen.
Termux (Linux terminal) is super cool, and you can install a lot of cools programs through it as well. Add in the plugins for tasker integration/etc and it can be used for some pretty cool things (ie, use wol to wake up your computer when you get close to your house, etc).
I haven't messed around with it much, but I wonder if you could use an overlay like rwfus to install the libs.
My understanding is that game mode uses Wayland as the display server, and then game scope is run as a compositor for running games and apps. However dispite game scope running on Wayland, it doesn't support Wayland clients yet. So all games running on it have to be run through xWayland instead.
Forcing a program or game to run in Wayland mode will prevent it from running, even though the base display server is Wayland. Honestly it's a confusing setup, but I'm assuming backward x support was the priority for compatibility reasons.
For anyone who prefers written guides to video guides, all of Cryobyte33's recent videos are available on SteamDeckHQ as a written article.
The only real difference is that desktop mode uses x and game mode uses Wayland. You can usually get a better experience in game mode (Wayland) because of the performance tools that let you easily cap frame rate/etc.
This is a big part of what I like about the steam deck, being able to stop instantly is huge, especially on a handheld.
Honestly I knew from having a switch that I really enjoyed a portable gaming device. My main gaming PC has been running Linux since ~2015 so I wasn't worried about compatibility issues with it being a Linux device.
So it was a pretty safe bet that I would like it. It's honestly exceeded my expectations though, I've barely played any games on my PC at all since getting it.
I know the dev's current priority is fixing bugs and performance issues, so it may run better now than when you tried it.
It runs acceptably on deck. Inside performance is great but the fps would tank outside. I had to disable a lot of the visual effects and drop the resolution slightly to keep a stable 30 outside. Honestly looks pretty good though even on the lower settings.