Subsurface Circular

Subsurface Circular is a loose take on text-based adventure games, with the game presented in a three-dimensional, third-person perspective. The player controls a robot detective in a futuristic setting, tasked with solving cases aboard a subway system below a human city that ferries around other robots that serve as the workforce. In the game, the robot detective must solve a case of a number of robots that have gone missing, by talking to other robots while they are on the subway cars, following various conversation trees, and at times, solving puzzles to help out a robot and get more information. The player acquires "focal points" on achieving certain goals, which then can be used to question other robots to get more information to solve the mystery.

While the player can select from several names for the playable character, this summary assumes the use of "Theta One One" for purposes of clarity.

Theta One One, the playable character, is an android-like Tek, assigned as a detective for other Teks on a subway system and serving his human masters, known as "management". During one night, one Tek, a fabricator, tells Theta One One of another Tek that had gone missing, and Theta One One decides to take the case. As the subway train circles the city, Theta One One talks to other Tek passengers, learning of a mysterious Red Tek that may be connected to the mystery, that a number of other Teks may have gone missing, and that there is growing resentment to Teks by the human population in the city above. Eventually, Theta One One is able to upload the case details to management, upon which they inform the Tek that since it took the case without their instructions, the Tek will be apprehended.

Subsurface Circular was developed by British video game designer and developer Mike Bithell along with a small team. Bithell had been pitching another game idea during the March 2017 Game Developers Conference. He recognised that negotiations for launching development of this game would take several months, and wanted to keep busy during this time, thus starting development of Subsurface Circular shortly after his return. Bithell was inspired by old text adventure games such as those he programmed as a youth on the BBC Micro, and decided to try creating a modern take on the genre with a short and focused narrative. He also wanted to explore the ideas of how robots will eventually replace humans as the primary workforce in the future, and how ethical and political issues around a sentient robotic workforce would be seen, comparing the situation to historical and modern-day insurgencies.

The game was announced and released for Microsoft Windows and macOS via Steam on 17 August 2017. Bithell considers this as a first of his "Bithell Shorts", games that are short and inexpensive that allow him to experiment with narrative approaches, while he continued to work on his next major release. Bithell planned this as a short game, one that would "respect [ones] time" to be completed within a single play session and not linger and remain unfinished as many AAA titles he felt can be. As he knew the game was short, he did not want to create great expectations for players, and opted to announce and release the game on the same day.

Subsurface Circular received high acclaim from critics. Upon release, the game received “generally favorable reviews” according to review aggregator website Metacritic, which gave the game a score of 79 based on 22 critic reviews.

Polygon reviewer Colin Campbell welcomed Bithell's idea of creating a series of short, experimental and narrative-driven games. Campbell complimented Subsurface Circular's "rich narrative landscape" presented through its dialogue and characters.