Musings on... Thomas Was Alone

Thomas Was Alone is an indie platform game created by Mike Bithell and narrated by Danny Wallace. It was released on PC in July 2012, and is currently available for a short time in the Humble Indie Bundle for any price, or more permanently from Steam for £5.99.

Thomas Was Alone is an interesting game, that much I'll give it. At a basic level you control a number of quadrilaterals of varying shapes and sizes, and guide them through increasingly complex puzzle rooms, in an endless quest to go up and to the right. The titular Thomas is your starting character, a small red rectangle, but soon you'll have a whole team of different 'people', each of whom have different abilities. Early on these abilities include the obvious - jumping higher or fitting through small gaps - but later characters, James especially, completely change the way the game plays.

Often you'll have at least two, usually more, characters on screen at once, and you select them through the number keys or by scrolling through them with Q and E. Most puzzles require you to use the different characters' abilities in conjunction with one another to push buttons or overcome gaps and oversized stairs.

The fact that I can still name close to every character in the game is testament to the strong writing and personification of the little shapes you maneuver around the levels. On the whole the writing and narration is brilliantly done. It creates an interesting, in-depth story, and manages to construct surprisingly large amounts of character out of simple shapes. The music is also excellent, and manages to avoid the classic bit-music that so many platformers rely on to provide a backing track.

For the most part the puzzles are straightforward and enjoyable to complete, but there are a few slip-ups. Several levels had me close to rage-quitting on multiple occasions, mainly due to their being too finicky for the slightly weightless control scheme. Another problem which I encountered when playing was that the game would sometimes not register key presses to change characters, which often led to frustration when I accidentally led a character to a watery grave.

Clocking in at about two or three hours, Thomas Was Alone is an enjoyable, if occasionally aggravating, little platformer, featuring strong narrative and music which lends this simple game an interesting spin. I would recommend this game for anyone who possesses a degree of patience, and enjoys a good story which is well told.