Have you considered retro-gaming? If the laptop isn’t much older than 20 years it should probably manage to run dosbox, and with it you can get a ton of old IPX multiplayer titles running, for instance Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Transport Tycoon, or Command and Conquer: Red Alert.

(Transport Tycoon also has an open source remake, OpenTTD, that can run on a potato. OpenTTD also runs in a browser, but afaik the browser-version is limited to single-player.)

Edit: Of course there is another thing about dosbox: Back then hot-seat or split-screen multiplayer was much more common, so this might also be an option.

It even runs on my Banana Pi CM4, with not great but very much playable FPS.

There are also non-open-hardware solutions available, which reach even bigger sizes at 33 Hz and 3 bit per pixel, for instance from Dasung.

I have the “DASUNG Paperlike Color (Revolutionary)”, and I use it for coding. I works really well for that purpose, but I would not recommend it for anything else. That’s because it really only has 3 bits per pixel, meaning you get exactly 8 colours: black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow. No shades of grey or anything, just those 8 colours in full saturation. For text (with disabled anti-aliasing - it makes the text fuzzy, but it is not needed, the resolution is great) that’s fine, for anything else not so much. Also, the contrast of the colour display isn’t too great. It either needs sunlight, its built-in front-light, or a desk lamp. It is also worth noting, that (at least the colour) Dasung screen does not have any display modes at higher bit-depth.

I also have a Boox Mira (non-Pro), which (I think) has 15 Hz, but unlike the Dasung, it also a “presentation mode” with more bits per pixel (I don’t know how many, I think it has 12) but much lower refresh rate (feels like 5 Hz). That mode is good for anything that doesn’t move, like reading papers or non-animated webpages.

I am using the Dasung for work, and the Boox for spare time stuff. Typing works better on the Dasung screen, because of its higher refresh rate. Reading works better on the Boox, because of its higher bit-depth.

If I wouldn’t already have the Boox Mira, I think I would buy the Modos screen for basically the same use-case. I am actually considering getting the Modos devkit, and modding my laptop with it, but will probably not do that because I barely use my laptop nowadays and can always just connect the Boox display via HDMI.

Disclaimer first: I haven’t played docked ever since I moved to my current apartment, so for about 2 years.

So, for me playing docked was a mixed bag. The main issue was that upscaling from 720p to 1080p (my TV’s native resolution) never yielded a satisfactory image quality. This means, that I only played games docked, that were relatively light on the hardware.

Things that worked well were 2D games, obviously, and light 3D games, like Cassette Beasts or the space-part of Elite: Dangerous (landing in Elite was, of course a no-go at native 1080p).

I also had issues with my gamepad, a DualShock 4, interfering with the WLAN of the deck. If I remember correctly, that has been fixed by a Steam Deck update meanwhile.

I also had severe issues trying to stream from my desktop to the Deck. It hadn’t liked my desktop’s 16:10 aspect ratio. From what I can tell from the current Steam Link Android app, it seems this also has been fixed meanwhile.

For the games that worked fine, I have had a lot of fun playing docked though.

I don’t have much time for gaming lately, but I found a couple of minutes this weekend to try out Gnomes.

From what I have seen, I cannot recommend this game enough.

Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

Bought it, but never played it. It’s still in its plastic wrapping, sitting on my shelf, taunting me, quietly whispering “pile of shame” every time I walk by.

Other Launchers don’t feel like tools. The other stores feel like a fucking nuisance.

The only other usable options are itch.io and GoG.com, who allow downloading the games directly on their websites, without the need for any launcher.