Thomas Was Alone

I try to play a few acclaimed "indie" games, or at least DLC games, every year. They lack the depth and polish of your blockbuster releases - Call of Duty, BioShock, Final Fantasy, what have you - but the best ones are interesting, unique, and memorable. Plus, they're always cheap as hell and almost always short and easy. Bastion, Braid, Journey, Limbo, and Super Meat Boy are examples of such games that I've played and posted here before. World of Goo is another great one that I played just a few months prior to the creation of the blog. None of these games was large enough in scope for me to consider it one of my very favorite games of all time, but they're all great games.

Enter Thomas Was Alone, perhaps the most minimalist game I've played to date on a console this side of 1995. (It's tough to say something like Pac-Man or Tetris doesn't win that contest, but that was entirely due to graphical limitations, not design choices.) The game consists of a hundred levels in which you navigate little squares and rectangles toward an exit. Throw in a charming British narrator, giving each of the quadrilaterals different names and personalities, and you've got yourself quite an endearing little puzzle platform game. The whole thing cost me ten bucks and took two, maybe three hours to beat. The platforming elements weren't challenging in the least, which made it a nice foil to the last DLC game I played, Super Meat Boy. Nope - this was a simple, elegant, fun, quick little title that I'd recommend to anyone. I'm pretty sure there are Windows and Mac versions of the game to download if you lack a PS3 or Vita.

Actually, this game was so quick and fun and simple that I think I'll spend some time trying to 100% it - a rarity in the backlog age. I may then also look into a DLC add-on that gives you a new character and twenty new levels. Time will tell!