Thomas Was Alone

Moby ID: 56772
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Description official descriptions

Thomas Was Alone is a puzzle platformer about friendship and a remake of the Flash game with the same name. The player takes control of a red shape that represents a string in a programming environment. The goal is to move through an abstract environment to complete 100 levels by moving and jumping. A level is completed when the shape is moved to a white outline of its form.

While the environment is a plain collection of shapes and the puzzle platforming is straightforward, the game is brought to life through the narration, explaining the thoughts and the emotions of the shape. The red shape is called Thomas and he feels alone. He has no idea where he is and does not know his purpose, but he quite enjoys moving around and jumping. Soon after, other shapes appear and while they provide a method for more complex puzzles by working together, the story's focus is on the interaction between the shapes, building their personality through their cooperation and abilities. The first to appear next is Christopher, an orange cube who takes an immediate dislike to Thomas. He cannot jump as high and they often need to act as stepping stones for each other. Other shapes to appear are the long and high jumping John, the large cube Claire who feels like a superhero because she can float on water while other shapes drown when they come in contact with it, and Laura who can be used to bounce as a trampoline.

In levels with multiple shapes, the player can switch between them to control them individually. Those levels have multiple white outlines and they can only be completed when all shapes are in the correct place. Not all levels contain all shapes at once but the player has no control over this at the start of a level. A grumpy Chris will for instance go about alone, and often the choice of the participating shapes and the level/puzzle design complement each other to visually express their emotions. In the level where Chris starts to fall in love with Laura for instance, the level is designed with a low ceiling showing Chris jumping like mad on Laura's trampoline shape. Later on a nemesis is introduced as a floating cloud.

A DLC expansion called Benjamin's Flight was first introduced as a commercial add-on for the PlayStation versions. Later it was made available for free for platforms were the game was already released (PC) and new platform versions had it included by default (iOS, Android, Wii U and Xbox One).

Spellings

  • 托马斯不孤单 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

110 People (8 developers, 102 thanks) · View all

For
Creator
Additional Music and Mastering
Narrator
Meshes
The Idea for Level 24
VO Recording
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Follow Me on Twitter
  • @MikeBithell
Special Thanks
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 22 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 25 ratings with 1 reviews)

An interesting presentation with nothing else to add

The Good
All the story is delivered by an extremely talented narrator.

The graphics are very clean and easy to read.

The Bad
Thomas Was Alone is a multi-character puzzle platformer: each character has different abilities and it's up to the players to find out how to make them interact with each other so that they can reach the end of the levels. It's not an original concept, but possibly a solid theme that could work. Unfortunately in this case it doesn't. There isn't enough meat to make the gameplay interesting, because most of the levels are uninspired and require little to no thinking. Only the final two chapters present some kind of challenge and interesting design. In most cases the level design revolves around carrying all available characters forward until an obstacle that can only be crossed by some of them is found. Those characters will then proceed to look for a device to open the way to the ones left behind, and so forth, until the game is over.

While the game certainly isn't hard, its controls try their best to make it so. To start it all, if you're using a gamepad, natively only the analog stick is supported for movement. It is understandable for people who play with Microsoft's Xbox 360 controllers, but since there exist options with decent d-pads on PC it's unacceptable to be limited to analog controls in a 2D game. The jumping feels extremely stiff and unresponsive, and in general the movement is quite buggy, with characters sticking to walls and having abnormal behaviour whenever they're on moving platforms.

The graphics, while I said they're clean, are not good at all. Some people might want to call these “retro”, but they go beyond that. There is no style to them, it's just coloured squares and rectangles.

The selling point of the game is supposed to be the story, so I've heard. As I mentioned, it's delivered by a fantastic narrator, and that helps. I personally didn't find the plot overwhelmingly good, but that's not the problem: the pace at which it was delivered is pretty poor. A lot of the narrative is cramped together, creating moments of overwhelming amounts of information opposed to others where nothing happens.

It should've perhaps been among the positive notes, given my overall feelings on the game, the fact that it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome: in three and a half hours I was able to complete the game and all of its achievements, including the two bonus chapters that, while promising at first, end up being unremarkable like the rest.

The Bottom Line
I understand what they were trying to do with this game, but to me it just didn't work. Neither the gameplay nor the story gripped me and, while it was an amazing pleasure to my ears, the narrator alone can't save this. I found no redeeming features that would make me want to not give it a completely negative rating.

Windows · by BeamingLizard (15) · 2015

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  • MobyGames ID: 56772
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Sciere.

Linux added by Rebecca Wallander.

Additional contributors: Rik Hideto, Kennyannydenny.

Game added July 5, 2012. Last modified February 22, 2024.