Thomas Was Alone

We’ve seen several games this year past e.g. Fez, Spec Ops: The Line, which can truly be said to have advanced the medium, and I wholeheartedly include Thomas Was Alone in that group.

Thomas Was Alone is a new masterpiece of independent development. Essential and creative, brilliant and funny.

Thomas Was Alone tells a story that's more complex than games orders of magnitude more expensive and difficult to develop. It's also a triumph of narrative's ability to convincingly superimpose human qualities onto nonhuman objects, telling the audience what's what (who's what?) and letting the imagination take over. It proves that you don't need tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of staff to make a game story worth telling, just a good hook, an engaging vision, and a whole lot of heart.

Short, sweet, and entirely too touching for a platform game about bouncy squared narrated by Danny Wallace. [Oct 2012, p.96]

Engaging, funny and fresh, not to mention stuffed to the brim with personality! [Oct 2012, p.91]

Absorbing adventure of rectangular heroes hides more secrets than you can see at first sight. Perfect example of a smart indie co-op arcade game. [Issue#220]

Not just another indie platformer, Thomas Was Alone is a unique narrative-driven experience that succeeds in combining its many different elements.

The understated aesthetic design and unusual co-op puzzles will absorb you for the game's duration – the wit and personality of the writing, though, will stay with you for much longer.

Playing Thomas Was Alone brought to mind a lyric from the song 'Darky' by Californian Nu-metallers (hed)PE; in which singer Jared Gomes growls 'One foot on the moon, one foot in the cave' – a sentiment that perfectly encapsulated the duality of the experience on show here; Thomas Was Alone embraces the new while keeping one foot firmly rooted in the past.

Fiddly bits notwithstanding, Thomas Was Alone is a game crafted with real love and attention. It shines through most prominently in its neurotic set of blocks, a cast so delightful you'd give them a cuddle if they weren't all sharp edges. Mind you, I'm not sure Chris would like that too much. But even that grumpy old square would admit that spending time with Thomas is, actually, a whole lot of fun.

Thomas Was Alone certainly is an interesting experiment: the simple geometric visual is full of nice touches and it's not a cheap programmer art. But most of all, the game succeeds in humanizing squares and rectangles with its great storytelling and voice-off.

Thomas Was Alone utilizes its diverse characters and varied obstacles to create an engaging platformer.

Thomas Was Alone’s greatest strengths are in its storytelling and character. In this it fully exceeds, keeping me playing past the point of growing over familiar and dreary of the oft-repeated mechanical themes. But due to this it can be expected that many who start the adventure will never finish it, though, which is certainly a shame.

Isn't a hard game, but it is occasionally a taxing one. [Sept 2012, p.108]

Mike Bithell fills the most simple geometrical figures with tremendous life. While the storytelling is absolutely charming the mechanics in this puzzler stay too simple most of the time.