I hope it can tap into a new audience despite the crowded-as-ever eShop

If you have a soft spot for 2012's Thomas Was Alone – or you think you'd be into a coz??y, minimalist puzzle-platformer about a cast of blocks making their way through the world with full narration helping to tell an honest-to-goodness worthwhile story – the game is resurfacing soon on Swit??ch.

As relayed by creator Mike Bithell today, the Nintendo Switch version of Thomas Was Alone will be out on February 19, 2021, with a 20 percent early-bird discount pushing the regular price down to $7.99. There's also a Switch demo, and it's playable now on the eShop. I love to see?? it.

So much has changed in the indie scene over the past decade, to say nothing of Bithell himself, whose career has only grown. Many games have come and gone, but Thomas Was Alone still resonates.

??As for the Switch port, it's only right. This game was on Wii U. Nothing can be left behind.

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Autographed by Mike Bithell

I haven't had the urge to buy blocks in... a long time, but these Thomas Was Alone "action figures" are testin??g ??my resolve. The Claire figure even floats, apparently, which sounds perfect for the tub.

Yes, I'm a supposed adult in the market for bath toys. Life takes unexpected turns. If your next one involves dropping £20 on these plastic prisms, you best act fast, as they're in very limited supply?.

Official Thomas Was Alone 'Deluxe' Action Figures [Kerry Dyer]

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Rectangles have butts too

Hello all and welcome to Laura's Gam??ing Butts, Destructoid's new weekly YouTube show about butts in videogames. Yep, it's a video podcast where I get guests in to talk about butts. Professional journalism a?t its finest.

This week we're joined by Mike Bithell, developer of Thomas Was Alone and Volume, to discuss the butts of his virtual quadrilaterals. Which storyt?elling format can be graphed to resemble a backside? Which character is powe??red by flatulence? Sit back and enjoy some butts.

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Now coming to Xbox One and Wii U too

Thomas Was Alone, the minimalist indie platformer about friendship and jumping, is finding companionship on some new consoles. It's been recently revealed that the game will come to PS4, and now it's confirmed to be headed to Xb??ox One and? Wii U also.

All three console versions of Thomas Was Alone will launch the same week -- ??sometime in November. It'll be priced at $9.99, but anyone that owns it on PS3 or PS Vita will be able to pick it up free as part of the cross-buy program.

It's easy to see why Mike Bithell, creator of Thomas Was Alone, had his eyes set on the current generation of consoles. That bump in polygons should really afford him the ability to draw th?e emotion out of the game that it deserves.

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German ratings board lists indie game for new platforms

Thomas Was Alone?? appears to be hopping over to Wii U and Xbox One, according to a pair of listings from the USK, Germany's software ratings board.

The indie platformer from Mike Bithell launched on PC in 2012, and has since come to PS3, Vita, iOS, and Android. The announcement will seemingly be made official soon enough, as publisher Curve Digital told Eurogamer it will have news on Thomas Was Alone in the next few days.

Curve recently revealed plans to port a trio of independent games to Wii U later this year, including Lone Survivor, The Swapper, and Stealth Inc. 2. The studio is also responsible for WiiWare sensation Fluidity, as well as Explodemon and the PSN release of Proteus. 

Bithell is now developing his follow-up to Thomas Was Alone, Volume, a stealth action game slate??d to creep onto PS4, Vita, and PC sometime next year.

Thomas Was Alone [USK via Eurogamer]

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DLC for an indie game, why I'd never

Thomas Was Alone is a pretty fantastic game, and it's available on iPad if Apple devices are your thing. Starting this week though, the Benjamin's Flight DLC is ready to download -- for free. It features 20 ne?w levels, three new characters, jetpack puzzles, and a new story.

If you haven't given the game a shot yet it's $5.99 on?? iPad (currently on sale), or $9.99 on the PC and PSN. Either platform is worth it??.

Thomas Was Alone [Apple]

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Grab it for $8.99

Indie darling Thomas Was Alone is now available on the iPad. Originally released for PC/Mac, and later the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, the puzzle-platf?ormer can now be yours? on the go for $8.99.

We found Thomas Was Alone a great experience, and it's done well enough to eclipse one million copies sold thus far.

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Proteus, Thomas Was Alone, Lone Survivor, and Stealth Inc., all cross buy PS3/Vita

Looking for something to play on your PS3 or Vita? Maybe both? Curve Studios is bundling four good games at the budget price of $15. $13.49 for PlayStation Plus members. All four games? are Cross Buy as well, meaning you get access t?o the PS3 and Vita versions. Not bad.

The four titles in question are Proteus, Thomas Was Alone, Lone Survivor, and Stealth Inc.

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Awesomenauts, Hotline Miami, and more

By now, you all should be intimately familiar with the Humble Bundle, which lets customers pay what they want for DRM-free copies of videogames, often includes soundtracks, and puts a portion of the proceeds toward charity. Humble Indie Bundle 8 is no different?? in those respects, but it's particularly notable as it includes some of our favorites from the past couple years.

Included in the bundle are Awesomenauts, Capsized, Dear Esther, Little Inferno, and Thomas Was Alone. Those paying above the average (currently sitting at $5.68) will also receive Hotline Miami and Proteus. Quite an impressive bundle, indeed.

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PS Plus members get SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny

Out this week on PS3 and PS Vita is the lovable platformer Thomas Was Alone featuring Cross-Buy. It's $9.99 (or $7.99 if you have a PlayStation Plus account) as of today in North America, with a European release happenin??g tomorrow. Also expect to find a 20-level DLC pack ($2.99) about a square with a jetpack, plus a commentary mode for the main game.

"Sony is a mega corporation; a big goliath of awesome tech and excellent button iconography," wrote creator Mike Bithell. "And for some reason, known best to themselves, they decided they wanted to let us indies play with their toys. Thomas is one of a massive wave of upcoming indie titles, which I hope will find whole new audiences. If?? you&rsquo?;ve never played an indie game before, take a chance on one of these games (not necessarily mine, obviously). We’d like to give you the opportunity to play slightly, well, differently."

In other PSN news, we've got that Resident Evil sale Hamza told us about and a complimentary copy of SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny on PSP/PS Vita for Plus members.

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I'm smug about this

Thomas Was Alone, the game that caused Jonathan Holmes and I to argue like children over the term "art game," is making a migration from PC to consoles with a PlayStation Network release. The game currently has a release date of "Spring.??"

The bit I get to feel smug about is the fact game creator Mike Bitthell actually credits Jimquisition as the reason for Cross-Buy. Apparently my fevered rantings are sometimes on the money, convincing the developer to make?? the game available on two systems with one purchase.

"Fun fact: Cross-Buy is in the game specifically because I watched a @JimSterling video about 30 minutes before first meeting with Sony," Tweeted the develo??per, causing my ego to skyrocket. 

Self-con??gratulation aside, this is good stuff. Always great to see Sony giving the indies a leg up, and smart inte??gration of console and handheld purchases is only ever a good thing. Well played to both Mike and Sony.

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New trailer heaps on the praise

Mike Bithell's minimalist platformer, Thomas Was Alone, has just been released on Steam. Above, you can witness a new trailer for the title,? featuring quotes from a number of respectable outlets (and this one) which praise pretty much everything about it. 

Rightly so. Thomas Was Alone is incredibly fun to play and I'm probably going to play it again now that it's up on Valve's service. That game is generally priced at $9.99, but you can save ten percent if you purchase during the game's introductory period. Go check it out!

As for the trailer, well, I think I did it better.

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Thomas Was Alone contains a lengthy narrative, a colorful and varied cast, and a story of cooperation, conflict, and epic questing. It meditates on sentience, love, friendship, loss, rivalry, and the basics of beginning a superheroic career. It packs into itself more heart, character, and d??rama than many triple-A titles.

That's quite a lot for a game that looks initially like an Ado?be Flash object-creation tutorial, starring a series of colored quadrilaterals.

Thomas Was Alone (PC [reviewed], Mac)
Developer: Mike Bithell
Publisher: Mike Bithell
MRSP: $9.99
Release: June 27, 2012

Thomas Was Alone is not by? any me??ans a mechanically complex game. Controls consist of moving and jumping, and not much more. If not for its unique storytelling hook and endearing characters -- an achievement not to be understated, mind you -- the game would be otherwise indistinguishable from the glut of indie puzzle-platformers that make up much of the scene.

Complexity rears its head in the game's party of rectangular adventurers. Each has unique characteristics, speed, jumping height, and occasionally special gimmicks. The red one can jump high and move fast, but is just the right size for the weaker jumpers to vault. The tall yellow one can jump really high, perfect for reaching far-off switches. The blue one can float in water, ferrying the rest majestically over deadly pools. The pink horizontal one can bar?ely hop, but can serve as a trampoline, boosting everyone else's airtime. And so on.

As such, the game's all about building stairs and cooperation, each piece helping each other piece make it to? appropriately shaped portals to move on to the next of one hundred total levels, divided into ten chapters. Players hoping for a more rigorous mental workout may be disappointed, for most of the game's puzzles are a bit too simple to engage fully (a couple of exceptions aside). As the cast grows, players may end up traversing an area multiple times, which can annoy folks looking just to get to the next bit of story. A level-select or way to skip puzzles after several failures would be welcome.

When I mentioned that the game looks at first glance like a Flash title, that shouldn't surprise; it began life as a Flash game. It's now powered by the Unity engine, but curves are still nowhere to be found. Levels are constructed of p??lain bla?ck shapes, and every character is a square or rectangle of some sort, distinguished only by shape, size, and color.

Closer examination reveals a deeper, more considered art style, though. Subtly animated backgrounds, moody, dynamic lighting and shadows, and a haunting, melancholy soundtrack courtesy of composer David Housden (available on Bandcamp) cast Thomas Was Alone as a deliberately minimalist game, it?s spare aesthetic not used as a compensation for limited resources. The game looks simply good, put plain.

This all helps to enhance the game's true star: its brilliantly-written story and unique approach to storytelling. Told through plummy-voiced narration by Danny Wallace (who voiced Assassin's Creed II's Shaun), the game weaves a tale loaded w?ith charm and personality, and manages the feat of giving heaps of character to simple mute, barely animate shapes.

As you play, you'll start to think of each little block as a person, with?? a name, history, and attitude. Thomas' irrepressible positivity, John's ego (as big as he is tall), squat Chris' constant whining ??and cynicism (a trait that's touchingly tempered by a first romance), and Claire's burgeoning superhero complex (because she's waterproof!) endears and inspires emotional investment amidst a backdrop of artificial intelligence and the travails of newborn sentience.

Thomas Was Alone tells a story that's more complex than games orders of magnitude more expensive and diffic??ult to develop. It's also a triumph of narrative's ability to convincingly superimpose human qualities onto nonhuman objects, telling the audience what's what (who's what?) and letting the imagination take over. It proves that you don't ne??ed tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of staff to make a game story worth telling, just a good hook, an engaging vision, and a whole lot of heart.

_{[Thomas Was Alone is currently available DRM-free directly from the developer, as well as on Desura and IndieCity.]}

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Last year, game designer Mike Bithell crafted a flash puzzle prototype -- Thomas Was Alone -- in 24 hours. It was a game that emphasized friendship and teamwork as you moved Thomas and his chums to specific areas by working together. For example, a small block could ride on an oblong block as it floats through water. It was fairly minimalist, with the characters represented by differently shaped blocks, but managed to strike a chord with Conrad, who checked it out.

A year on, Mike has been working to turn this into a full game. It's coming out in April next year as a downloadable title for PC and Mac. The trailer has me intrigued, despite the simple ??appearance of the levels and the music is certain to add ambiance. Keep an eye out for this one, folks.

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