When I think about Thomas Was Alone I can’t help but think about one of my favourite games, Portal 2. At a base level both are very little as players solve puzzles to move from one stage to the next with a story presented by a seemly omnipresent narrator. But whereas Portal 2 is easily one of my favourite games, Thomas Was Alone falls flat and fails by comparison. In short, the gameplay feels tacked on and the story not entertaining enough to justify the lacklustre gameplay.
My main problem with the game as alluded to above is with the gameplay. The trouble is that the puzzles simply aren’t challenging enough to feel rewarding entirely by themselves. In Portal when you solve a particularly difficult puzzle it feels awesome. The adrenaline rush as all the pieces fall into place, as you find the path through obscurity leaves you feeling victorious as if you have conquered a mountain. Thomas Was Alone by comparison has no such joy in solving puzzles. As the level pans to give an overview of what’s in store for players its obvious what the player must do to reach the stages end. There’s no challenge or difficulty to the task and it soon becomes a mundane task one must perform in order to progress to the next piece of dialogue and story. This would be fine if the story was a excellently written as a game such as Portal but sadly that is something few games are capable of achieving. It tries its hand at a witty narrator to add flavour and character to the games world but it just came across as a poor impression of the Portal style of storytelling.
A final issue I have with the gameplay are the occasional levels which become impossible to complete if the player mistimes a jump or falls from a platform. Perhaps this is merely a design nitpick of mine but I believe if through some action that it is possible for the player to arrive in a situation where the only way to progress is to quit and load their last checkpoint is bad design. Granted some situations like this may slip through the cracks during development but in multiple of the games stages I arrived in such a situation only to discover a forced reset was required in order for me even to attempt the level again.
Note it does nail the awesome soundtrack as Portal 2 did but apart from that lone aspect the rest left me feeling rather empty and alone. Maybe that was the actual intent all along to cause some portion of the player base to feel alone (in which case bravo) but I fear that’s beginning to think and look a bit too much into the game.
Thomas Was Alone is not a bad game. Its failures lie in the fact that the gameplay experience is too simplistic and rote to carry the game through to its conclusion. It relies on its narrative to encourage players to progress but unless the narrative just clicks with the player then the experience as a whole feels pretty meaningless.