Game:

Thomas Was Alone (2012)

Category:

Review

Duration: 2:11

1,400 views

20

Developed by Mike Bithell and narrated by Danny Wallace, Thomas Was Alone takes you on a minimalistic puzzle platformer while telling a story of friendship. The object of the game is to get your shapes to their outlines. You start with Thomas, a lone rectangle, and more characters shows up with different abilities, like floating, double jump, or trampoline. There's 100 levels that will take you a couple hours to complete, and an interesting story that gets told throughout the adventure. The characters jump at different heights, so you'll be stacking them up in order to complete puzzles and progress. There's also some hazards like water and nails you have to look out for, but most of the areas are safe. And dying just respawns you from the starting point or checkpoint, so there's only a small consequence. You can cycle through different characters with the triggers, which is a bit cumbersome. Hotkeys are much better. Don't forget you can move the camera with the right stick on some levels. By far my favorite aspect of the game is the creator's commentary. I wouldn't have knew about it unless I was reviewing the game and took a look at the options, so make sure you turn up the commentary volume because it's really a great listen. I found it more interesting than the original story which is pretty soothing, and melts with the music nicely. There's online leader boards, but you have to view them separately from the scenario select which is annoying, and there's no ghosts or quick restarts so it probably wasn't originally intended for time trialing. My biggest problem is that the game is too easy. Especially the early stages you usually finish the level before the reading even finishes. The creator clearly spent a lot of thought on level design, but I wished he pushed me further. with more dangers and harder puzzles. Overall, Thomas Was Alone is an incredible insight to the wonders of game design. What other in-game commentaries are really good? Start a dialogue in the comment section and share this video with developers.