Disclaimer: I received a review copy of Thomas Was Alone for the Nintendo Switch by Mike Bithell Games from their Operations Director after responding to a Tweet from Mike Bithell. The game was given and received without promise, voiced or expressed expectation of a positive review and faithfully observed the established review embargo until the allotted time of 09:00 GMT on Friday, February 19, 2021. All of the words and pictures used in this article, unless stated otherwise, are from my own experience playing on the Nintendo Switch console.
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| I did take/use/modify this image from the Thomas Was Alone press packet. |
I will be 100% honest with you. Thomas Was Alone is one of my favorite games across all platforms. I first played it back in 2014 on my laptop through Steam before I had a controller, so I was using keyboard controls, which sounds horrible to play a platformer with WASD & Spacebar, but Thomas Was Alone was forgiving enough that I was able to look past these sub-par controls, a fault of my own and not of the game. Oddly enough though, I only played through the game that one time in 2014, playing through the main 90 levels and then through the 20 "Benjamin's Flight" DLC chapters. This time around, I played through the game a whopping two times because a commentary was included as a secondary audio channel, but more on that later.
Thomas Was Alone is a narrated story-driven platformer where you go from Point A to Point B using quadrilaterals of varying sizes each with a different ability. What I have always loved about this game is that it is not trying to be a punishing pixel-perfect platformer like Super Meat Boy. The point of Thomas Was Alone is the telling of a story about an AI named Thomas who becomes self-aware, meets up with other AI on their search for the fabled "Fountain." Each quadrilateral has their own unique abilities like Thomas can jump pretty high, but not as high as the tall yellow John, but is out jumped by the small purple Sara who is able to jump (nearly) as high as John, but is capable of performing a double jump. All of these characters are introduced steadily throughout the 100 levels so it never feels overwhelming having to deal with so many characters on screen at the same time. And you are not always playing with the same characters all the time. For instance, on one level you might have Thomas, Chris, and Sarah, and on another level, you have Chris, John, Sarah, and Claire. The individual levels are never overly long either, some can be completed in fewer than 15 seconds, often before the narration is completed.
And that I feel is a way that developer Mike Bithell gets across to the player the tone and pacing for the game. You could just speed your way through without paying attention to or letting the narration finish in each level, but that is not what the game is about (you can see my developing thoughts on speedrunning here). There were a number of levels where I hovered around the exit portal for a couple of seconds because I wanted to hear the rest of the narration and on more than one occasion, I accidentally finished a stage before the narration finished so I went back and redid the previous stage. The narration of the story by Danny Wallace instills the perfect amount of life and feeling into all of the 2D monochrome quadrilaterals that before you finish the game, you almost forget that you are dealing with shapes instead of humanoid characters. And it is not like some of the narration directly has to do with the actions being performed by the characters, some of it comes across as background information and exposition, further developing the quadrilaterals and deeper characters. It is just a testament to the perfect combination of amazing writing, perfect vocal delivery, and heartfelt music. 
The port to the Nintendo Switch by Ant Workshop is something that I have been hoping for since I first got the Switch, always feeling that this type of game would be perfect for the hand-held format, that it was not at all hardware intensive and selfishly because I wanted to be able to play it while lying in bed. I did play the entirety of the game in handheld mode so I cannot speak to playing it on the Switch through the TV, but there were zero latency issues, no milliseconds of dead space after pressing a button. One of my two complaints about the entirety of the game had to do with the volume of the commentary versus the rest of the game once the commentary stopped. I felt that the volume of Mike Bithell's voice, even with the separate commentary volume turned up to 100 was pretty quiet so that I had the Switch volume cranked higher than I usually do for any other game, but then when he stopped talking, the regular in-game music, narration and sound effects would return to their regular pre-set volume (not that these were were completely muted when the commentary track was playing, but just played at about 20% volume), which often forced me to decrease the Switch volume manually. I did eventually adjust the music and narration volume down to 60-70, which seemed like a happy medium so that I could listen to the commentary and when it stopped, not scramble for another volume control.
But the commentary. The commentary! I personally love film commentaries and will often wait for a release of a film if the first release does not contain a commentary, or buy a specific version of a film I already want because there is a commentary. Commentaries in video games is something that I would definitely love to see more of although I have played a few that did manage to incorporate commentaries well like Portal through Steam, and the Amnesia Collection which is also available on the Switch. Now, there are great commentaries, like on Cube and El Mariachi, and then there are not so great commentaries like on Lethal Weapon 4, but Mike Bithell's solo commentary for each stage is pretty amazing.
He talks a lot about design choices for various stages, often focusing on the specific stage you are playing as well as developmental challenges with creating the game. As was the sometimes the case with the story narration, there were several stages where I was ready to complete it and move on, but the commentary continued, so I just milled around a bit listening to Mike Bithell talk about fan reactions or level design, which I was 100% okay with, again because I love audio commentaries. I do not know what I was expecting out of Mr. Bithell's voice, but he does have a very soothing voice and his delivery would not be been out of place as the narrator in a sequel. Or he could do another commentary, really for any game out there, I do not think I care.
One sad note, not directly pertaining to the Switch port, there was no audio commentary for the Benjamin's Flight DLC stages, included in this (and I think most?) versions of Thomas Was Alone. I did replay through the last 20 levels just in case there was an audio hidden somewhere in one of the stages (say, for 2o seconds in 11.3), but it was all just the original audio. The first 90 stages in the game were what Thomas Was Alone originally was, and the final 20 stages (10.1 - 11.10) were part of a prequel story that is a very similar game to the first 90 stages, but different enough for me to want to listen to Mike Bithell talk for another 30 minutes about these changes. For one, I found the Benjamin's Flight stages to be a little more traditional as far as platformer levels go with more challenging obstacles and moments that required you to switch to a different character on the fly to have them perform an action and then immediately switch back to the first. Was this because of criticism of Thomas Was Alone being too easy? Why decide on a jetpack as a mode of jumping for the extra levels? What happened to Benjamin's father? Why does Benjamin have a father? I'm sure I could read interviews about these, but after hearing the commentary track for the first 90 stages, I want to hear it from the Mouth of Bithell, preferably while I'm playing those stages.
If you happen to never have played Thomas Was Alone on any of the platforms it was released on over the last 11 years, and you have a Nintendo Switch, I would recommend this game. If you have played Thomas Was Alone but it has been more than five years since you played this game on a different platform with a different control method and you have a Nintendo Switch, I would recommend this game. If you are like me and played this game six years ago and happened to receive a review copy of the game, you can buy an eShop card for someone else who has a Nintendo Switch for the sole purpose of buying this game because as I mentioned way up at the top, Thomas Was Alone is one of my favorite games. The writing, the emotional impact of the characters, the narration, the music all fit perfectly together to create this amazing gaming experience that does not hinder you if you are just starting out with video games or have been playing pretty consistently for the last 35 years. I am also just a sucker for a game about friendship and loss through adventure and adversity.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
We Swore Blood Brothers Against The Wind
P.S. I used "[Third Impressions]" in the title and an inside joke with myself because when I wrote my First Impressions article back in 2014, it was a year after Dr. Potts had reviewed the game in his First Impressions of Thomas Was Alone and at the time, I thought I was being clever by writing Second Impressions, being the second time we had a First Impressions article for the same game.
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