but it turns out that searching "pinball" on steam comes up with bizarrely few results, and most of those are either games just called "pinball" with about five total reviews and a negative consensus, or IP-integrated heavily monetized tables from one franchise called Pinball FX.
anyway if anyone knows good pinball games that i could get to work on the steam deck lmk
Demon's Tilt looks good.
Virtual Pinball X would be ideal but that's a lot of fiddly configuration
"Pro Pinball Ultra" only features one table, "Timeshock," but I'd argue it's the single best pinball sim ever made. Outstanding flipper physics, cool music, & a solid table layout with lots to do. Plus, you can adjust the lighting, "take off the glass" to steer the ball with the mouse (an explicit "cheat mode"), and use the Operators' Menu to mess around with the rules of the game as you like.
...still pretty expensive for what it is. You can also expect large additional downloads for each perspective of the table that you select, as the game depends on bundles of high-res pre-rendered graphics.
when it comes to the Pinball FX franchise, the good stuff is if you get the Williams table packs -- the tables from '90s Bally/Williams.
You actually get mostly the tables that were original themes, not licenses, because it's hard to get back the licenses Bally/Williams had, though they have in a few big cases like The Addams Family. You get a lot of other very well regarded tables like Monster Bash, Theatre of Magic, Attack from Mars, High Speed 2, etc.
I can't stand Pinball FX's flagship tables that are like 50 tables about Marvel and 50 tables about Star Wars and they all play too long, but the Williams pack is great.
