Thomas Was Alone - Cheap Thoughts

Minimalism is something that’s hard to get right in storytelling, it’s a very thin line that means it’s easy for a storyteller to go too minimalist and not actually give all the details needed to understand-or even worse, care-about what’s happening. That is except for one medium where I think minimalism thrives and that’s videogames. I’ve always argued the gaming platform has some of the most untapped potential in storytelling because it has several advantages that no other medium does, its interactivity instantly helps establish a connection between player and character, meaning a videogame like The Last of Us can kill a character off within the first 20 minutes and have it be heart-wrenching because we were that character. Because of this I think a lot of videogames can get a lot done with a lot less. Shadow of the Colossus doesn’t explain why it’s protagonist wants to revive the fallen woman, we fill in the blanks with whatever would make us want to go through all the effort to save them. This brings us to this post's main point: Thomas Was Alone.

Thomas Was Alone is an indie puzzle platformer created by Mike Bithell and released in 2010. The game follows a small rectangle named Thomas has he traverses each level, meets up with fellow quadrilateral characters with distinct names, designs and personalities as the player tries to solve puzzles in order to progress in the game. Except we’re not told any of this by Thomas himself. Thomas is just a red rectangle. No face, no voice, nothing even remotely distinct about him. The same is said for every other character, just a variety of squares that the player can move about. The details come from a voice over narration by Danny Wallace, who throughout the game will give random tidbits about the characters and that’s what gives them character. For example, the character of Claire is a giant blue square and is the only square that can survive in water, because of this she thinks she has super powers.

Because of this bare-bone information we’re given as well as like I said-the instant establishment between character and player-this game creates a group of loveable misfits with the absolute minimum needed, just a voice actor saying “This character is cynical, this one is insecure, this one fancies the other”. As the player, I fill in the blanks whenever there is no narration, I found myself imagining the conversations these characters would have during gameplay whenever I would screw up, or even just to fill time. It’s an interesting experiment and an affective one because at one point in the game, the roster of characters completely change and I found myself upset and missing the old group, even though it was basically the exact same game, just the squares were different colours and the narrator just says they’re different people.

This is the fantastic thing about Thomas Was Alone, it does so much with so little, a simple puzzle platformer ends up creating one of my favourite ensembles in gaming, simply because it knows the advantages of being a game. On top of that the game also has an incredible score David Housden, who provides an atmospheric-yet comforting melody throughout the game, made up of mostly techno sounds, again, embracing the nature of the story. Both through the plot of the game and medium itself. This is an astounding game, it highlights the best of what gaming is capable of, its method of storytelling, its solid gameplay and its mesmerizing score all make it a straight up work of brilliance. 9/10.

-Danny