In the year 2018, Steam can be described in many ways, but "hospitable to developers who make short games" is not one of them. And yet, developer Mike Bithell just released Quarantine Circular, his second non-free, story-based game that can easily be finished before Steam's refund timer runs out.

In Quarantine Circular, a plague is ravaging humanity, destroying cities and pushing our existence to the brink. As extinction looms, a mysterious creature from the stars appears, their motives unclear. It's up to you to navigate the situation and hopefully save humanity.

In Subsurface Circular, you ride a subway full of robots going about their daily lives. Your job is to help solve their problems, but there's a catch: you can't ever leave your seat. The game came out on PC last August, but, like most things, it's even better on the Nintendo Switch.

Today Thomas Was Alone and Volume designer Mike Bithell dropped a surprise game on Steam called Subsurface Circular. It's a short robot detective story set entirely on a train beneath a futuristic city, and it's pretty cool.

Thomas Was Alone, Mike Bithell's charming 2010 platformer about the inner lives of hopping geometric shapes, was an experiment in the power of storytelling to triumph over abstraction. Volume, Bithell's new game, is also a successful experiment in abstraction, although the narrative is realistic, or realistic science fiction. This time, it's the interactions that are stripped to their essences.

Wondering what the creator of Thomas Was Alone has been doing? He's been making Volume.

Video: Volume -- the cool-looking stealth game from the creator of Thomas Was Alone that combines the Robin Hood legend with inspiration from Metal Gear's VR Missions -- will be out on August 18 on PlayStation platforms and Steam.

Originality in video games is overrated. I see no better proof of that today than Shadow of Mordor. The game shamelessly borrows its combat from the Batman: Arkham series, to give one example. But it also introduced the "nemesis system", which is one of the most provocative and original ideas I've seen in a long time.

Video: "There's no way that more teraflops don't equal more emotions!" This very funny video serves as an announcement that charming indie creation Thomas Was Alone is coming to PS4, Xbox One and Wii U this November.