Thomas Was Alone

Thomas Was Alone is a minimalist platform about jumping and friendship, a gently challenging puzzle game and a perfect story that makes you care about characters that are nothing more than coloured rectangles. It's quite a masterpiece.

While a few technical hiccups do occasionally spoil the party – there’s a touch of latency in the jumping controls and the odd little bug that makes matters a touch confusing – there’s so little to fault in Bithell’s striking debut. This is a game to admire, to enjoy and evangelise; a thoroughly English slice of indie magic that is every bit as accomplished as anything with a budget and a team. If this truly is the year of the indie, then long may it continue.

The key word in the Thomas Was Alone for me is "was." I really hope more people find and download this gem, because it's totally worth the effort. In many ways it's a lot like a good book, where when you're done, you feel slightly alone having experienced it.

When the curtain finally closed on Thomas Was Alone, I couldn’t help but feel touched. Despite being two-dimensional in appearance, the game’s cast of characters exuded more personality and depth than that of some games propped up by millions of dollars of development funding.

All you need do is have a taste for platformers and a love of good stories.

It is a great puzzle and platform game, but overall, it's a great story that lies behind a bunch of rectangles that happen to be some AI.

This puzzle platformer may sport some the most dull looking characters we have ever seen in a videogame. But you just can not help but care for these small little blocks because of the game's very well designed mechanics and great storytelling. [June 2013, p.90]

Thomas Was Alone might not be a flashy, adrenaline pumping action-fest, but it is everything that I love about quirky PSN games.

Admittedly, the platforming mechanics occasionally feel too simple for their own good, but the narrative and gameplay weave together so seamlessly that the game becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Its little blocks have heart, and that gave me a reason to see things through to the end.

Between the jokes, the writing and the soundtrack — which alternates between dissonant scratches and transcendent melodies per each scene — it hooked into my emotions.

It's an original, and when something has personality, the flaws become quirks; even, in a way, essential. Thomas Was Alone, needless to say, has a whole lot of personality.

At its core, Thomas Was Alone is a celebration of the differences between people, and as a celebration its puzzles are far more concerned with offering a hurdle to overcome rather than obstacles to fail. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

Thomas Was Alone does an incredible thing: it makes you care about characters that are nothing more than coloured rectangles.

A winning piece of minimalist game design that manages to do a lot with a little in an industry which far too frequently achieves the exact opposite, and it deserves much praise for that.