How Thomas Was Alone has changed my thinking on platformers and emotion in games.

How Thomas Was Alone has changed my thinking on platformers and emotion in games.

Thomas was alone is a strange strange game that I’m falling in love with in a weird and wonderful way. Its a game about some programming errors (represented as squares and rectangles) that each have their own personalities, and are trying to find their way through this strange and confusing world. Each character has his/her own opinions on the others, and each have their own motives. It’s really quite crazy how much Mike Bithell has made me care about a mere set of squares and rectangles. He stripes away all of the pretty graphics, and shows that in order to care for a character you need a story/personality, not fancy art.

This has really changed my mindset in regards to my own game, and has got me in turmoil at the moment as to what I want my game to look like. I mean, you don’t need a gorgeously realistic character to feel empathy for a character, you just need a good backstory, and a good distinctive personality for the player to relate. It’s amazing how I remember each of the shapes names, but genuinely can’t recall anyones name from something like Game of Thrones.

I’ll post more in the coming weeks of character design, and let my imagination go wild. I want to take all my gaming habits into consideration for this project, and everything I’ve ever read, so here’s to hoping I come up with something pretty original.

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