This 100%

I agree, even MacOS is a more capable software development platform than Windows these days.

The generation of Amstrad, Spectrum etc had the games on tape. I would say they were the closest thing to a console pre-NES, so 1980s. I had an amstrad that was handed down to me by a friend of an older sister and it had tapes like this.

I don’t use Heroic that much so I might be misunderstanding things, but isn’t that exactly what the OP has said wants to avoid?

How are you launching the games, through Heroic? You could create multiple shortcuts to Heroic as non-steam games, one for each game you want; this is what I do for GeForce Now. Then use a decky plugin to change the cover / etc on the menu so that you have different icons for each game.

Also, if you look up the ID of a game on SteamDB, you can set the name of your “Non-Steam game” shortcut to that (e.g. 3792227499) and when you open it you’ll get access to all the custom gamepad layouts people have made for that game. They’ll stop showing up once you revert the name to something more readable, but this will give you temporary access to set one.

Sorry if this is not very clear, my brain is working at half power right now and I feel this message came out a right mess. I hope it’s a helpful mess though!