Thomas Was Alone: But they're just rectangles!

Yes, I'm alive.  Rather busy, but alive.  Crunch time at work, lots of hours, none of you care so here is Thomas Was Alone.

Storytelling.  That word needs to be more often used in the games industry.  It's a bit of a lost art form to be fair.  We like our information very fast and very concise these days, no mucking about with details and sublties!  There's nazis to kill!  Why is this guy talking to me?  I need to kill more people!

It's not entirely developer's fault.  Storytelling is often overlooked in lew of better graphics, keeping the pace fast and delivering a fun product that's easily accessible to pick up and play.  I'm guilty of buying into it as well, my opinion on Just Cause 2 was that it was a really fun game and it had terrible storytelling to the point where it probably would have been better off not existing at all in the game.  But then along comes a game that reminds you that stories are nice and characters that you can relate to creates better atmosphere and it makes you realize a need for something you thought you lost long ago, to connect with something.

I connected with rectangles, I'm still a little confused on how that happened.

Thomas Was Alone is a puzzle platformer with the world's most simplified graphics, all the characters are rectangles.  Sure they're different colors, but really, they're rectangles. 

Mechanically it plays just fine.  The controls make sense, although it had been a very long time since I used the arrow keys for a game.  Platforming is tight, insanely simple and it all works very well.  That's about it, it's a platformer, you... platform, no explanation required.

 But controls are not what makes this game, that would be the story.

Thomas Was Alone now sits nicely up in the top three of "Best Indie Game Storytelling" keeping it company up there is Bastion and To The Moon so it should be very proud of it's position.  The story is told by a third party narrator in the style of an impassioned British radio broadcaster reading his son a bedtime story, with all the inflection that would come with it.  It's very pleasent.

Despite none of the characters ever talking, these rectangles have personalities, fears, hopes, dreams, it's rather astounding.  I remember at one point I was playing and my girlfriend came home, asked me what I was playing and I was able to rattle off the names of all of the "characters" in the game as well as what they were like.  I was amazed, I sometimes forget the name of the main character in larger titles even if they constantly shout it at me.  Let alone knowing what the personalities of anyone other than the main character but I remembered that Chris was kind of a dick and John liked being helpful.

Play this game, that's the short of this post.  It's just so... nice.  The design is great, the puzzles are fun and challenging, the music is wonderful and the storytelling is top notch.  I'm hoping to see more, but for now, I'm just glad Thomas is no longer alone.

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