Thomas Was Alone

Thomas Was Alone takes place within a computer mainframe, where some unspecified "Event" has caused several artificial intelligence routines to run out of control and gain personality. Each entity is represented by a simple coloured shape; the game's eponymous character is a simple red rectangle. Each shape has unique abilities; while all shapes can move left or right across platforms and perform jumps, the height of these jumps may be limited by the shape, or they may have other abilities, such as being able to float on water. When the player has access to two or more of these shapes, they can freely switch between them, controlling one shape at a time.

Though the shapes themselves cannot be heard, the narrator describes the personalities and thoughts of each shape as the game progresses.

A company called Artificial Life Solutions experiments with various artificial intelligence solutions, but something unexplained causes some AIs to become self-aware. These AIs perceive their digital world as a 2D space with themselves represented as quadrilateral shapes.

One of them is called "Thomas-AT-23-6-12", or simply Thomas, represented as a red rectangle. Thomas is curious and observant by nature. He starts to travel through his internal world, trying to find out his own purpose and perhaps companionship. He meets other AIs, each with different personalities and abilities: the cynical Chris, the show-off John, the self-proclaimed superhero Claire, and the apprehensive Laura.

Thomas Was Alone was developed by Mike Bithell. The initial concept of the game was created during a personal 24-hour game jam while Bithell was working at Blitz Games in October 2010. Bithell based the game on the concept of friendship, and came upon the mechanics of using multiple blocks with different abilities as a means of representing this. , and the idea of modernism and minimalism exemplified by the Bauhaus school.

The initial game was a Flash-based browser game released to the Kongregate site on 17 October 2010, though since has been removed in favor of the more expansive effort. Bithell had planned to expand the game to include a story and additional platforming elements like buttons and platforms, as well as to fix issues he felt were wrong with the game's controls.

Thomas Was Alone received positive reviews from critics, praising the use of narration to give otherwise simplistic shapes personalities, and the careful introduction and pacing of puzzles to create a smooth learning curve over the otherwise short game. Aggregating review website Metacritic calculated an average scores of 80 out of 100 for the PlayStation 3 version, 79 out of 100 for the Wii U version, 78 out of 100 for the PlayStation Vita version, and 77 out of 100 for the PC version.

The storytelling and characters were praised by reviewers specifically, with IGN stating that "it is the most endearingly characterful game about jumping rectangles that you will ever play", and Destructoid saying, "Thomas Was Alone tells a story that's more complex than games orders of magnitude more expensive and difficult to develop." Of the script, The Telegraph called it "a fascinating example of great writing". Steven O'Donnell of Good Game said "I love how such simple shapes can form such strong personalities. I found myself imagining little conversations between them as I played."