Yes I cried to this game. A bunch of 2D shapes and I cried to that. I swear I’m not going insane.

Thomas was alone is a game I wasn’t expecting to particularly like. Granted, I had heard the acclaim it had almost 10 years ago but I never really saw it as a game I could really sink my teeth into. Yes I’ve played my fair share of platforming puzzle games and most of the time they never cease to not get on my nerves. Platformers can be difficult for me sometimes by themselves, couple that with some puzzle elements and I’m gonna be either throwing my controller out the window or simply trying to compose myself as I tackle the same level for 61st time. However, This game was…different. Yes I still struggled at quite a few levels and it did feel quite repetitive but, it had something not many puzzle platformers can say they have: a heart.

In Thomas was alone, you play as a set of Ai’s, which are being experimented on by some sort of research company, which take the form of different 2D shapes (mainly squares and rectangles). One of these rectangles is named Thomas, and he is almost like your main character in a sense. He is eventually joined by Chris, John, Claire, Laura, James, and Sarah.

Chris is essentially your grumpy, Scrooge like character when you first meet him. He tries to keep himself to himself and he’s someone that gets annoyed at people who try to help him. As the game goes on however, he begins to soften up more and more and when he meets Laura, he begins to genuinely feel something. It’s his lack of purpose that keeps him as this grumpy and fed up little square. Without something to live by, he just sees everything and everyone as a chore, but as soon as he meets Laura and gets used to everyone, he realises how important being with people is and how important you can be to other people.

John is the show off, or at least that’s how people see him. He likes to see himself as the superior ai and have quite the audience. He’s shown as being quite egocentric but hardly unlikeable as even throughout he still shows a respect to the others. As soon as Sarah shows up and shows that she can jump higher than even John, he learns to support her nonetheless instead of feeling jealous and aims to support others.

Claire is quite a childish yet very protecting character which goes along with her traits. She can swim through poisonous water which the rest of the cast cannot. As soon as she learns she can she gains a higher purpose and begins to show her true personality. She even declares herself as ‘super Claire’ sporting the whole world as her nemesis and spikes as her kryptonite. She is shown to be quite childish yet still wishes to protect her friends at all costs.

Laura is a character with a very low self-esteem. She feels as though she has been used by many different ai’s and especially the pixel cloud (an entity that appears through most levels and gobbles up the characters at points) as bait. Her ability is almost like a trampoline as when people land on top of her they bounce up, which fits in with the fact she feels used by others. That is until she meets Chris. At first she was quite wary that he would just leave her like the others, yet eventually learns to cling to him as they share a mutual love for each other. She is quite a depressive character who is only truly brought out by Chris and shown to be a much more happier character.

James is quite an introverted character and is meant to be the opposite to Thomas both mentally and physically (and coupled with the fact that he walks along the ceiling and jumps towards the floor). He is a green shape whilst Thomas is red, and whilst James is much more introverted, Thomas is shown to be more extroverted. However, James slowly learns that being himself isn’t too bad and that he does have a purpose. He shows that, both him and Thomas need each other and that they are the perfect yin and yang to each other, which also happens to reflect itself in the levels as well.

Sarah is…she’s kind of there to be honest. Granted, she has one of the best abilities in the game with the fact she can double jump, she talks about the ‘fountain of wisdom’ and leads them onto them helping others become sentient but other then that she doesn’t really have that polarising of a personality. She was part of the dlc known as ‘Benjamin’s flight’ but whether I’ll ever play that is slim to none. Yeah she’s kind of there.

After all of that you then have the ‘second generation Ai’s’ which are the Ai’s that the original gang decided to help. They have a mini plot where it turns out one of them, named Grey, was going to attempt to betray the others that were also trying to escape, but he got eaten by a pixel cloud and the only 2 that made it out were shapes names Jo and Sam.

The gameplay of Thomas was alone is pretty good to begin with but slowly starts to become very repetitive. Whilst it was fun to see what you could do with the different shapes and their abilities, eventually it did become quite simple and easy to get. I think if it didn’t have such a brilliant narrative, I probably would’ve given this game an even lower score but, that’s what’s so great about games. The gameplay does spice up a bit once you start playing as the ‘second generation ai’s’ but it still feels a tiny bit repetitive. But hey, I still really enjoyed it. The music was also brilliant and definitely worth mentioning. David Housden’s work on the game was brilliant, sounding like a mix between the band ‘explosions in the sky’ with a tiny bit of electronic inspiration behind it. The narrator as well, Danny Wallace. He isn’t your Stephen fry from littlebigplanet nor is he your Kevan Brighting from the Stanley parable but he’s certainly up there and does a very great job.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this game. It was short but also an absolute blast and I’m thrilled to have given it a try. I might give the dlc a go, however I haven’t heard the best things said about it so I might leave it off. This was an absolutely brilliant experience and I do encourage others to give it a try, even if it has been practically 10 years since it was first released. Mike Bithell, you have my respect.

Brilliant narrative, decent yet repetitive gameplay, excellent music, wonderful narration, shapes made me cry