{"id":1012,"date":"2013-10-20T10:54:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T09:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2013-10-20T10:54:49","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T09:54:49","slug":"thomas-was-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/20\/thomas-was-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Was Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Thomas-Was-Alone.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Thomas-Was-Alone\" style=\"border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Thomas-Was-Alone\" src=\"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Thomas-Was-Alone_thumb.jpg\" width=\"645\" height=\"378\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Let me tell you about \u201cThomas Was Alone\u201d\u2026 This was probably the best game I\u2019ve played this whole year, and in some regards, in the last few years!<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Yep, I\u2019ll let that sink in\u2026 <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">First of all, I\u2019ll flatly state that although I like indie games, I\u2019m not much for artsy-ones (they feel pretentious and empty, like \u201cThe Path\u201d and \u201cPassage\u201d), or the usual minimalist opus (to disguise the fact that they\u2019re lacking in graphical skills)\u2026<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">But, although TWA is a bit artsy and minimalistic, it\u2019s the exact opposite of pretentious and the minimalism doesn\u2019t seem to be there to hid the lack of graphical skills, but as an aesthetic choice.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">But what makes the game so great, you might ask? Well, the game itself is very nice\u2026 You control rectangles with different abilities, sometimes more than one in a single level (you can swap between them). Some of them can jump higher, but are too tall to pass through certain places, another acts as a trampoline and so forth.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">So, you got a nifty, very well designed platformer\u2026 but there\u2019s hundreds of well designed platformers out there, what makes this one so special?<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The writing and the narration\u2026 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/mikebithell\">Mike Bithell<\/a> does an extraordinary work in fleshing out rectangles, creating an emotional bond between them and the player that\u2019s surprisingly strong\u2026 Someone should force David Cage play this and learn that you don\u2019t need high polycounts or fancy shaders to get that illusive connection in place!<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">In fact, I haven\u2019t felt such a strong connection to characters in games since I played \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/dai5ychain.net\/breath\/\">I Can Hold My Breath Forever<\/a>\u201d\u2026 There must be something in the \u201cchild-like innocence\u201d both of these games display, while having good gameplay mechanics and just showing enough of the story that you add the rest mentally or wait for the conclusion to find out about.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Final note to the artistic side of the game\u2026 at first it looks very minimalistic, but everything in the game is really very cared for\u2026 the skewed levels, the way text blends in the scenario, etc\u2026<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">So, definitely grab this one, it\u2019s a real work of art\u2026 <strong>10\/10<\/strong>&#160;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">\n<div id=\"scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:342a95af-9167-4813-a951-684f6edee29b\" class=\"wlWriterEditableSmartContent\" style=\"float: none; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px\">\n<div><object width=\"648\" height=\"364\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/uigWhf2zRbQ?hl=en&amp;hd=1\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/uigWhf2zRbQ?hl=en&amp;hd=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"648\" height=\"364\"><\/embed><\/object><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"tweetbutton1012\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fshadowcovenant.com%2Fblog%2F2013%2F10%2F20%2Fthomas-was-alone%2F&amp;text=Thomas%20Was%20Alone&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fshadowcovenant.com%2Fblog%2F2013%2F10%2F20%2Fthomas-was-alone%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me tell you about \u201cThomas Was Alone\u201d\u2026 This was probably the best game I\u2019ve played this whole year, and in some regards, in the last few years! Yep, I\u2019ll let that sink in\u2026 First of all, I\u2019ll flatly state that although I like indie games, I\u2019m not much for artsy-ones (they feel pretentious and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div id=\"tweetbutton1012\" class=\"tw_button\" style=\"\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fshadowcovenant.com%2Fblog%2F2013%2F10%2F20%2Fthomas-was-alone%2F&amp;text=Thomas%20Was%20Alone&amp;related=&amp;lang=en&amp;count=horizontal&amp;counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fshadowcovenant.com%2Fblog%2F2013%2F10%2F20%2Fthomas-was-alone%2F\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  style=\"width:55px;height:22px;background:transparent url('http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-tweet-button\/tweetn.png') no-repeat  0 0;text-align:left;text-indent:-9999px;display:block;\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,173],"tags":[217,215,216],"class_list":["post-1012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-indie-2","tag-alone","tag-thomas","tag-was"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}