[Game Review] Thomas Was Alone

"Thomas was alone. Wow. A weird first thought to have." 

-The Narrator

Games such as this, are rare. Not rare in terms of how good it is mind you, Thomas Was Alone is nowhere near the best game you'll play even in a year, but it's a remarkable game nonetheless. Thomas Was Alone is a game that knows a couple of things about the fundamentals of both gaming and storytelling; it understands that you don't need flashy lights, amazing graphics, or even dialogue between characters to tell a good story. No. Apparently, all you need is a narrator with an awesome voice, a bunch of multicolored squares of varying sizes, and a passion to realize your vision. I'll explain what exactly I'm talking about in a minute, but before that, allow me to introduce myself, and precisely why the game I'll be talking about today is worth all this buildup.

     Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, I hope you are having a great day, and today, it's Thomas Was Alone, a game that only took up one afternoon, but gave me a lot of things to think about. 

Thomas Was Alone is an indie puzzle-platformer created and developed by a bloke named Mike Bithell. He also published the thing, with the help of Curve Studios and Bossa Studios, and the game was first released for download on June 30th of 2012. Now, let me give you a quick rundown of a couple of things. First of, yes, "Thomas" is an indie title, and thus the graphics are rather limited. Everything is made of squares black and white squares, and you the player, control one of more different colored polygons. These polygons don't even speak, however, we do have a British narrator letting us know what they are thinking at any given time. I'll use this as a seg-way to get into the story; because yes, at first, thinking that you could possibly grow attached to what are essentially shapes seems a little far-fetched, but mark my words, if you haven't grown fond of these shapes by the end of the game, then you probably have a void in your soul.

See those colored shapes? Yeah, those are our characters. From left to right: John, Claire, James, Chris(Sarah on top of him), Thomas, and Laura.

It turns these shapes into characters the good old fashioned way. It personifies every one, giving them each distinct personalities and goals, and not even kidding here, gives them all ample development, even if you might need to dig deep into added content and subtle hints to find it all. Development which not only is realistic in both pace and direction, but is also conveyed just right. It's easy to call the game lazy by essentially having a narrator reading out everything a character is thinking at a start of a level, but Thomas Was Alone is also a believer in show-don't-tell. Often the actions you the player make the characters preform are proof enough of just how far they've come. This is nowhere more prevalent than in the game's amazing ending, an ending which puts you on the spot about just how much you can actually care about colored polygons by being simultaneously heartbreaking and sweet at the same time. Also, since these after all shapes, you know that this isn't cheap drama to get the emotions running, whatever you feel at the end of the game is a direct product of your attachment to the characters and the legitimately good writing that formed that attachment. And I wish I could say that about more things.

     If we do turn to the actual story, it's fairly simple, and I guess I'm fine with that for a game like those, but the problems I have are mostly structural. If we do turn back to the lazy aspect of the writing, the story is basically handed to you in small bits at the beginning of each level, and while it tries to keep the information a steady build to a reveal, it doesn't take too long to figure what exactly the story is actually about. That's even if you do take the time to read these segments; I mostly just glazed over them not entirely taking in they were truly saying, but that was mostly because I wanted to know what Thomas or Sarah thought about the situation. All of that said however, I'd still be perfectly fine with the story. It was a simple story for a simple game(though one that gives you plenty of food for thought), and the overall message of the game and those last few moments were enough to make me overlook the shortcomings of the story...if not for one glaring flaw. A flaw which thankfully leaves the characters untouched, but a flaw that really prevents me from giving Thomas Was Alone as high a score as I would like. So you know that awesome ending I've been talking about? Yeah, I might like the game more...if that actually was the ending. See, the game decided, even if it meant completely switching out the main cast I'd come to love for a group of less memorable characters, that it just wanted to pad out the run-time a little longer. This last fourth or so of the game isn't bad by any means, and even has a feature which will make you smile sadly in nostalgia and bitter-sweetness when you first see it, but the characters it decides to introduce just don't have the time of the original cast to develop properly. This is no more apparent in this kind of random villain we get during this time of the game, who just comes as a jerk with no redeeming features. We also need to control him and help him accomplish his goals, which does lead to a disconnect with story and game-play; because if it were up to me, I would just have the guy fall into the deadly water and be done with it. As for the real, real ending of the game, while it's still pretty good, it doesn't quite end on that powerful note that the other could have, and just leaves me disappointed that Mike Bithell and his team couldn't have just cut the game a little shorter and given me a lot less to complain about. 

Claire carries the gang across the water to safety. 

We get to game play, finally, and I'm glad to say it's fairly stellar. At the beginning of each level you control one more of the characters, and attempt to solve whatever puzzle is presented by jumping, stacking characters to make staircases, or using each of the character's special power. What do I mean? Well, Claire for example can swim in the typically deadly water, or Luara is very bouncy, and you can use her to bounce characters higher than they could usually jump for a character like Chris who can hardly jump at all. Team dynamic is very important here, you need to figure out what strategies you can use with the characters available; can you use a character as a platform so another can jump onto a high ledge, or will use John's high jumping to get to a switch out of sight for the others? What's good that your strategies need to keep changing because the characters for any given level keep switching around. You could have solely Thomas for one level, or maybe Claire, Chris and Sarah for another, and even sometimes you have all seven main characters for a level. It keeps the game-play fresh, and is also a good tool for character interactions to continually drive the story onward. However, there are a few problems. Firstly, a difficulty curve in this game is basically nonexistent; unless you count keeping track of all of the character's abilities later on in the game, no particular level is harder than any other. I could absolutely blow through 15 or so levels in a row, then get stuck on a random one, which brings me to another problem, the puzzles themselves aren't all that challenging. Oh, they won't insult your intelligence or anything, but save a few given levels, I never really stopped hard to think more than a minute to figure most of them out, and when compared to other puzzle games that I love, like Portal or maybe Braid, Thomas Was Alone never really can hold a candle to that. Lastly, and while this probably goes for most games of this genre, there is absolutely no replay value at all. The most you can get if you want more once you've finished the game is a DLC of sorts where you play a cube named Benjamin trying to find "The Fountain". Again, it's not bad, but once again, similar to the last fourth of the original game, the time constraints don't leave much room for character development, though I will say these extra few levels provide some much needed back-story on Sarah, and you get to use a flipping jet-pack, which kind of instantly makes this DLC better, even if the bugger is really hard to control. Luckily, that's just because the controls are super sensitive, and that's not really any fault of the developers.

1. Where Are You

7. Alone Again

9. A Time For Change

11. Freedom

Produced by then- recent university graduate David Housden, I actually really like Thomas Was Alone's OST. If taken at face value, you could say that the soundtrack is kind of samey, which I understand, basically all of the songs are different pitches of similar tunes played over the same electronic jingle. You'll see what I mean more clearly in the songs above; but everything aside, many of the songs sound alike, and they all give off differing intensities of the same emotion. And I'm OK with that, which is something new. Usually I hate it when soundtracks don't have  lot of variety to them, but in this case, I almost think it works. This game doesn't need awesome guitar solos and epic choirs; the whole soundtrack sounds very calm and serene, with spikes of emotion, very similar in fact to how the game plays out. That's it I think. I don't think I've found a soundtrack and game that just feel like they belong so much with each-other, like this OST couldn't possibly belong to a different game, and that's a rare feeling. It might be just because of how perfectly the songs fit the scenes they are played in, but nevertheless the music is here, and now it's something I can play whenever I want a soundtrack I can just listen to passively, and remember all the great moments from the game that came with it. 

So no, Thomas Was Alone isn't anything particularly amazing really. It has a mediocre story, good characters, a nice soundtrack, so you'd think it would all even out to average right? Well maybe, if this was any other game. But it isn't. Thomas Was Alone is proof that great stories and games can be made out of anything, even a bunch a polygons, who for all logical sense, shouldn't be this easy to get attached to. But they are, every one of them awesome characters in their own right, and that is worth so much more than it seems. It makes me glad that games like this still exist, and it puts a smile on my face whenever I think about it. That's kind of brilliant in its own right. 

     With that, I bring this review to an end, and I hope you enjoyed. Thomas Was Alone is available on Steam for a crazy little amount of money, so if you're one of the many people who have yet to play this game, I highly recommend you go buy this game as soon as possible. Seriously, there's no game I've played that's quite like this, in both existence and the bittersweet emotion it gives off. If there is though, seriously, let me know about. That would be awesome. Goodbye for now guys. 

Final Verdict: 7(.5)/10

P.S: It is fitting that their first act was one of selflessness.

Enjoy the review? Click here for my game review of Bastion.

My anime review of Angle Beats is here. 

If book are more you thing, my review of Ender's Game is here. 

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