Five new Steam games you probably missed (August 31, 2020)

(Image credit: Chasing Rats Games)

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

Struggling

Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌
Release:‌ ‌August 28‌ ‌
Developer:‌ ‌Chasing Rats Games ‌
Price:‌ ‌$14.99‌ ‌|‌ ‌£11.99‌ ‌|‌ ‌AU$21.50‌

In Struggling you play as a weird mutant monstrosity that wouldn't look out of place in The Forest: it has a big ugly double-face and two giant arms, and using these arms you've got to mantle through "a deranged world where anything goes." It's a sidescrolling platformer with weird physics, in other words, and while it can be played single-player, the two-player cooperative mode lets each player control their own arm. That could be either maddening or very fun—quite possibly both.

Transport Inc

Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌
Release:‌ ‌August 27
Developer:‌ ‌Digifox‌ ‌
Price:‌ ‌$11.99‌ ‌|‌ ‌£9.29‌ ‌|‌ ‌AU$16.95

Here's a new transport management game, but unlike some of the competition it's focused mainly on the business side of things—it doesn't look like you'll be meticulously designing routes like in OpenTTD, for example. There are more than 27 vehicle types, the maps are based on real locations, and in addition to a free play mode, there's a campaign that follows the drama of a family-operated transport business. "Connect capitals around the world," the Steam description reads. "Watch and adapt to economic situations. Purchase your opponent’s companies or cause them to go bankrupt. Experience how it feels to face constantly changing traffic conditions. There is a strike in Paris? Redirect your vehicles!" The excitement never ends.

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk

Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌
Release:‌ August 26
Developer:‌ Nikita Kryukov
Price:‌ ‌$0.99‌ ‌|‌ ‌£0.79‌ ‌|‌ ‌AU$1.50‌ 

The description for this short narrative-driven game is fairly vague: it seems to be about helping a girl buy milk, but the art style suggests something far less menial is at hand. "The game is a small visual novel, showing either funny abstraction and wordplay or painful psychological episodes," the Steam description reads. "The claim that history is based on real events will be too specific, so it is easier to pretend that it is just a set of abstractions and wordplay." Whatever the case, the art style is brilliant and there appears to be some kind of alien in the game, which is always nice.

Vengeful Heart

Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌
Release:‌ ‌August 28‌ ‌
Developer:‌ ‌Salmon Snake, Elmo Mustonen, Hanuli
Price:‌ ‌$9.99‌ ‌|‌ ‌£7.19‌ ‌|‌ ‌AU$14.50‌

Vengeful Heart is a cyberpunk visual novel about an ambitious engineer who, for some reason, suddenly becomes homeless. What follows is a kind of revenge tale: protagonist Josephine Lace is "hellbent on taking down the system that ruined her and left her without a heart." This mission takes her through the PC98-styled streets of a grim future dystopia, which suffers a terminal water shortage as it shrinks from a devastated outside world. The art style is gorgeous, the tone bleakly amusing.

Chronicon

Steam‌ ‌page‌ ‌
Release:‌ August 21 ‌
Developer:‌ Subworld
Price:‌ ‌$13.99‌ ‌|‌ ‌£10.99‌ ‌|‌ ‌AU$19.95

This retro-styled ARPG has been in Early Access for years now, but it finally launched into 1.0 last week and it looks really great. There are four playable classes and the dungeons are procedurally generated: given the generous 400+ items and 900+ skills and perks, there's a lot of meat on the bone if you want to do several (or dozens) of playthroughs. Everything you'd expect from a rich ARPG is here, like crafting and endgame content and cooperative play, though you'll need to use Remote Play Together if you want to make the most of the latter.

These games were released between August 24 and 31 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.  

Shaun Prescott

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.