Five new Steam games you probably missed (March 16, 2020)

On an average day, about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that's a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we've gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the new games of 2020. 

Bright Bird

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Steam page
Release: March 12
Developer: 北京星磐科技
Price: $9.99 | £7.19 | AU$14.50

Bright Bird is a Chinese side-scrolling puzzle game with a lush hand drawn art style. The game features two protagonists in the form of Yao and Xuan, who are both on a mission to find the nominal bird in order to "solve the smog crisis". One glance at the trailer above, and you'll quickly see that the game is very far from drenched in smog: rich colour schemes and gorgeous vistas are the order of the day, which should take the edge off some of the more head-scratching puzzles.

Artificial Extinction

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Steam page
Release: March 14
Developer: 100Hr Games
Price: $19.99 | £15.49 | AU$28.95

Artificial Extinction has a fascinating premise: you're a colonist on a strange planet, tasked with finding a safe environment for your family. There is (as always) a problem, though. This planet is harried by once-benign terra-forming robots designed to make the place inhabitable for humans, except they've gone rogue, and now they want the place for themselves. Played from a first-person perspective, Artificial Extinction blends tense resource acquisition and base defence, against a backdrop of AI scepticism.

Half Past Fate

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Steam page
Release: March 12
Developer: Serenity Forge
Price: $19.99 | £15.49 | AU$28.95

Here's a "slice-of-life" game that blends the usual visual novel trappings with an over world design reminiscent of 16-bit RPGs. It's about the intersecting love lives of "six ordinary people", including a tech CEO, some investor guy, a tea connoisseur and a retro game collector (among others). The art style carefully blends an isometric 3D environment with ye olde sprites, and has been getting rave reviews from Nintendo-oriented websites (it's also on Switch).

Stela

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Steam page
Release: March 14
Developer: SkyBox Labs
Price: $19.99 | £15.49 | AU$28.95

Described as a "cinematic, atmospheric" platformer, Stela bears more than a passing resemblance to Playdead's (Limbo, Inside) creations. Set in a crumbling ancient world, Stela blends platforming with puzzles, but the star attraction is the landscape itself, all grandiose ruins and lonely vistas. It's definitely one for fans of set piece laden sidescrollers, like the aforementioned Playdead games or Forgotten Anne and Gris.

Hidden Through Time

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Steam page
Release: March 12
Developer: Crazy Monkey Studios
Price: $7.99 | £5.99 | AU$11.50

From the creators of Guns, Gore and Cannoli comes an entirely different (and far less gory) game. Rather than murdering folk, you're looking for things in what appears to be a light twist on the hidden object genre (or more directly, a take on Hidden Folks). The maps take place in different time periods, and once you've completed them there's a map editor to tinker with and, hopefully, a pool of user-created content to keep you going.

These games were released between March 9 and 16 2020. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read our affiliate policy for more info.