Stylized with no capitalization, Thomas Was Alone was released by indie developer Mike Bithell in 2010 with little expectation or thought to the effect his project would have on the gaming community. The minimalist platformer sparked a minimalism craze extending to and including a return to the 8- and 16- bit graphic styles in addition to the rise in “Video Games as Art” movement. It was the beginning of an era where people questioned what could be done with games and the necessity of publishing giants to make them. With this in mind, it’s easy to devalue Thomas Was Alone compared to the effort put into titles from bigger developing companies, even if they’re only 5-man teams. However, let’s start by examining the game on its own merits.
In the beginning, Thomas is the only character you control, a red rectangle two blocks high in a simple, blocky platformer landscape. All you can do is move at a constant speed and jump. Pretty soon, a whole cast of characters, variously sized and colored quadrilaterals, is assembled and you switch between them in order to utilize their unique characteristics to overcome obstacles and reach the goal. From reversed gravity to the ability to float on water, the powers each rectangle possesses would be moot were it not for the highly polished mechanics and clean physics. Granted, all you do is move and jump but it’s particularly refreshing not being able to glitch through a wall, a feat not uncommon in today’s games focused on realism. When you play the game you’ll see that your character rectangle does not overlap with the floor blocks because of some shoddy programming, which is particularly important in such a simple game and I think that’s worth something. The characters will never accidentally slip off the edge and you can tell because the visuals are sharp, the colors are vibrant and stand out in clear contrast to the background and inanimate objects. Quite simply, the game is a pleasure to look at and has great feel.
However, the narration is the element that caught most people off guard. When players think of platformers, the games that usually come to mind involve stretches of platforming punctuated by cutscenes to move the story along or if it’s old school, no explicit narration at all. Thomas Was Alone breaks this trend and tells the story from a retrospective point of view while you play, a frame story that you cause to exist. Half the game’s charm and appeal comes from the beautiful and amusing voicework of Danny Wallace, a stark contrast to the simplistic gameplay of Thomas’s adventure. In fact, the question posed by the indie project was if a minimalist game could still prove dramatic and deliver a meaningful narrative.
At the time of release, there were plenty of flash games online that answered the question, some quite successfully, but Thomas Was Alone reached new heights that none of the others did. The simultaneous narration/gameplay combination was fresh for many and the time usually spent on the game came out to around 1-3 hours, unlike the bite-sized gaming session of a flash game. Ultimately, the game wins an 8/10 for innovative storytelling and gameplay so polished you could see your skin cells if you used it as a mirror. However, the story is still a bit nebulous at times, leaving the player in the dark and mildly breaking the suspension of disbelief. Thomas Was Alone was one of the games that lead the way for indie developers, consequently, there are many of games after it that do it better in one way or another, possibly depressing its score to a 6/10. Regardless, if you are looking for a great game to introduce someone to platforming, convince somebody that games can be intelligent or break them into gaming in general, Thomas Was Alone is a great title to start with. With the popularity of the game and people vouching for it to their friends, it’s safe to say that Thomas is no longer alone.
INDIE-vidual Gamers 