It’s the characters that make the game linger in memory though, those featureless shapes. The music beeps and bops away, its melancholy bursting into an electronic longing during the most difficult challenges. They don’t speak but their conversations and interactions are described by Danny Wallace’s narration, which works well, although it is at its best in the game’s earlier, emptier stages.

Characters are basic shapes because that allows them to form stairs for one another to climb, and makes them feel part of their world of edges and corners. The design is minimalist, with barely anything wasted. All of that is fine, if a little easy save for a couple of levels that stumped me for a good while, but it’s the look and the sound of the game that make it stand out. Levels are obstacles to be overcome through some light thinking and basic platforming. Their abilities combine with the narrator’s insights into their thoughts and what begins as a minimalist experiment in co-operative (though single player) puzzling, grows into a quest, with conflict as well as companionship.Īt heart, which the game has a lot of, this is a puzzle game. Every last one of the cast is represented by a quadrilateral shape, of various colours, shapes and sizes, but they have more character than your average bald space marine and many of them even have character development. There are heroes, freaks, villains, sages, friends, enthusiasts and lovers in Thomas Was Alone. It’s a tale of friendship, co-operation, sentience and rivalry, but is it possible to care about a gang of abstract shapes and the puzzling environments they traverse? Here’s wot I think. Thomas Was Alone and he was also a Flash game but now he’s grown up and it’s time for him to meet some new friends and set off on a journey that will change them all forever.

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