My gang of rectangles actually went through hardships and personal triumphs fit for a world-saving JRPG (albeit a really succinct one). Pretty soon the storyline became more meaningful than just a series of random personal anecdotes from the characters and the seemingly random quotes at the beginning started to make sense. The gameplay is enjoyable, sure, but the real driving force for me was hearing the next tidbit about Thomas or Chris. I quickly found myself playing simply for the story, just to find out what happened to these little quadrilaterals I'd become so attached to. It's really impressive how a simple piece of clever narration can put character into the otherwise characterless entities. I loved hearing about how the bounce pad Laura was scarred of meeting other shapes because they soon left her behind after making use of her ability, or Claire's depression which is caused how useless she is and then elation at her newly discovered abilities. When I first saw videos of Thomas Was Alone I thought the concept of simple shapes with a robust storyline and narration behind them would be cute and good for a laugh, but what I found was so much better than that. With all that said, I actually adored my time with this deceptively simple little platformer, and that's all down to its presentational strengths. One definite flaw that even the developer mentions in the commentary for the game is that the puzzles get a bit stair-heavy at times, which just means repeating the same solution three times when you should only really be required it once. Most of the puzzles are fairly easy to figure out and just require a bit of skill to accomplish, but there are very few levels with any tension behind them as there are arguably no enemies and very few sections where time is of the essence.
You switch between characters with L1/R1 and jump with the “x” button, so the bar to entry is pretty low (although selecting characters when you have more than four can get a bit cumbersome).Įvery level has portals that each character has to reach, and they all have to be at their designated portal at the same time in order to progress. Each rectangle has different abilities like jump height, or being able to fit into certain openings that the others can't, or even acting as a bounce pad so that others can reach new heights. Thomas Was Alone is a simple indie puzzle platformer which features rectangles for characters. By Karl Koebke, posted on 27 April 2013 / 4,599 Views
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