Gaming Week 22: Thomas Was Alone (PS Vita)
Note: I wasn’t going to write a full review for Thomas Was Alone due to a bunch of other games I’ve been playing, but I then realised that just because it’s an indie game, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get treated the same as Triple-A budget games. Especially due to how much this game touched me and made me rethink my own ideas on platformers and characterisation. So here it is, a review on a relatively recent indie game, enjoy! Thomas Was Alone is a platformer stripped down to its core mechanics, a player moves a character across the screen trying to get from point A to B using different techniques. It’s not only stripped down to its core mechanics in gameplay, but also in graphics, with every character being simple geometric squares and rectangles which can move at different speeds and jump at different heights. Everything that I just said…
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…