I really enjoyed this game. You should defintely play it again someday with the sound on. I think you really missed out by not even knowing about it having a narrator until near the end. The puzzles themselves are enjoyable, but in my opinion the narratation is what made this game so charming.
Thomas Was Alone: A Review
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 On 01/23/2014 at 10:24 AM by transmet2033 See More From This User » |
Play it.
I sat down with Thomas Was Alone unsure of what to expect beyond a platformer. I was immediately pulled into the game and actually finished it in two sittings. The first sitting was while my wife watched "What Not To Wear" when correcting. The second sitting was the next day while I waited for rice to finish cooking. I put somewhere around 3-4 hours into it and can say that it is one of the best games that I have played all year.
Thomas Was Alone is a fairly simple and straightforward plartformer with some puzzles thrown in for good mearsure. Overall I think that the puzzley-ness of the game follows a difficulty curve similar to Portal. The first 60-80% of the game have fairly simple puzzles that can be finished fairly quickly. Then you hit a point where things get significantly more interesting and you need to spend a little bit more time with the levels. TWA is definitely easier overall though.
As far as actual gameplay, TWA is all about walking and jumping. They throw in some extra things to worry about with new characters, that are different colored and shaped blocks. Each of them have a different personality and abilities. Throughout the game you switch between the characters in a given level to progress to the exit. Overall fairly simple stuff, but it is engaging.
The one thing that I did not experience until I was about 90% through the game was the audio. I am actually regretting playing through so much of the game without it. The little bit of music that I heard was amazing, and there is a narrator. The one problem with the games that I had to begin with were small bits of dialog that I couldn't read. I found out later that they are spoken by a narrator. Ever since Logan Cunningham in Bastion, narrators are cool... just like bow ties.
The only real problem that I found with the game was the controls. This is a really stupid problem that only occurs with the Vita. I would constantly bump the touchscreen with my gigantic thumb, which would change the playable characters.
For a simple platforming adventure full of 100 levels, look no further than Thomas Was Alone. I actually expect myself to go through the entire game again sometime this year just to experience all of the music and narration. That is how much I enjoyed it, I hope to play it again... soon. If you want a numbered score... I would give it 4-4.5 out of 5 stars....
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