$4.99 (−50%)Thomas Was Alone Rectangles with feelings
Guide a band of sentient rectangles through 120 puzzle levels, one well-placed jump at a time.
Is Thomas Was Alone worth it?
Thomas Was Alone is worth it if…
- you want a short, gentle puzzle game that respects your evening
- you care more about characters and narration than about difficulty
- you like the idea of getting attached to a rectangle
- you enjoy a good story read to you while you solve light puzzles
Screenshots
A team of shapes, each with a trick
Thomas starts alone: a small rectangle with a decent jump and a lot of questions. Then the others show up. There is a tall one who leaps higher than anyone, a squat one who squeezes through gaps, a big one who floats on water and carries the rest like a raft, one who bounces others off her back, one who walks on the ceiling, one proud of her double jump. Ten-plus characters, each with a name, a personality and one ability.
The puzzles ask you to put those abilities together. Stack the tall one as a step for the short one, ferry everyone across water, leave nobody behind at the exit portal. As the group grows, so does the juggling, and the best solutions feel like choreography rather than platforming.
A story told in a warm voice
Beneath the jumping sits the story of the first artificial intelligences to wake up inside a computer mainframe, and how they came to be, well, "emerge" is the word the game prefers to escape. The narration is the heart of it: Danny Wallace reads the rectangles' thoughts wistfully and with a dry streak, and he won a BAFTA for it. A line or two per level gives each shape doubts, vanities and small hopes, and somehow colored blocks become people you root for.
David Housden's score carries the mood between lines, and the clean geometric look, all light, shadow and shifting backgrounds, leaves your imagination room to fill in the world. The puzzles themselves are gentle; come for the characters and the story more than a challenge.
How long does it take to finish?
Is it hard?
No, and it does not want to be. The puzzles ease you in and grow trickier as more characters join, but the game is built around a relaxed pace rather than a difficulty wall. If you want precision platforming that punishes every mistimed jump, this is not it; if you want to think a little and smile a lot, it is.
Can you play it solo?
It is a singleplayer game through and through, and the teamwork happens on screen rather than on a couch: you swap between the characters yourself, using each one's ability to help the others along. One player, whole squad.
Do you need to follow the story to enjoy it?
The story is the point, so it is worth listening rather than skipping. It unfolds through short narration between levels, and it goes somewhere more layered than the opening suggests. If spoken English is a hurdle, subtitles are there to keep you with it.
