Thomas Was Alone
Development
Development
-----------

[thumb\|left\|Mike Bithell at the 2013 Game Developers Conference Europe](/wiki/File:Mike_bithell_GDC_Europe_2013_cropped.jpg "Mike bithell GDC Europe 2013 cropped.jpg")
*Thomas Was Alone* was developed by Mike Bithell. The initial concept of the game was created during a personal 24\-hour [game jam](/wiki/Game_jam "Game jam") while Bithell was working at [Blitz Games](/wiki/Blitz_Games "Blitz Games") in October 2010\. Bithell based the game on the concept of friendship, and came upon the mechanics of using multiple blocks with different abilities as a means of representing this. He was also inspired by the idea of people chained together and forced to work as one to escape as highlighted in the film *[O Brother, Where Art Thou?](/wiki/O_Brother%2C_Where_Art_Thou%3F "O Brother, Where Art Thou?")*, and the idea of modernism and minimalism exemplified by the [Bauhaus](/wiki/Bauhaus "Bauhaus") school. The initial game was a [Flash](/wiki/Adobe_Flash "Adobe Flash")\-based browser game released to the [Kongregate](/wiki/Kongregate "Kongregate") site on 17 October 2010, though since has been removed in favor of the more expansive effort. Bithell had planned to expand the game to include a story and additional platforming elements like buttons and platforms, as well as to fix issues he felt were wrong with the game's controls.

[thumb\|right\|upright\|Humorist [Danny Wallace](/wiki/Danny_Wallace_%28humorist%29 "Danny Wallace (humorist)") provides the voice of the Narrator in the game, which earned him a [BAFTA](/wiki/British_Academy_Video_Games_Awards "British Academy Video Games Awards") Performance award.](/wiki/File:Danny_Wallace.jpg "Danny Wallace.jpg") 
Bithell started to work on a more complete version of *Thomas Was Alone* in early 2011, considering this a means to teach himself how to work with the [Unity game engine](/wiki/Unity_%28game_engine%29 "Unity (game engine)"). During this time, he became lead game designer at [Bossa Studios](/wiki/Bossa_Studios "Bossa Studios") in London, where development of *Thomas Was Alone* was done on Bithell's off\-hours with Bossa's blessing. Bithell continued to use rectangular characters, in part due to the inspiration of [Piet Mondrian](/wiki/Piet_Mondrian "Piet Mondrian")'s minimalist works, and to keep the stacking mechanic relatively simple. He developed other areas of the game to contrast the "sterile" feel of the rectangular characters. Considering the story and gameplay design aesthetics used by [Valve](/wiki/Valve_Corporation "Valve Corporation") in their games, Bithell wrote a script to give each of the rectangles a personality and add some humor inspired by [Douglas Adams](/wiki/Douglas_Adams "Douglas Adams") and [Danny Wallace](/wiki/Danny_Wallace_%28humorist%29 "Danny Wallace (humorist)"). Wallace himself is the game's narrator, a result of Bithell requesting the humorist's participation in the project after struggling to find equivalent voice actors. Bithell estimates that it cost him £5,000 for all of the game's development and legal costs (excluding his own wage), and had raised another £2,000 through an [Indiegogo](/wiki/Indiegogo "Indiegogo") fundraising campaign to get Wallace's voice work. At the time of release, Bithell had help in spreading the word by other developers like [Éric Chahi](/wiki/%C3%89ric_Chahi "Éric Chahi"), and a humorous [April Fools](/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day "April Fools' Day") video created by motion capture studio Audiomotion, claiming that *Thomas*s animations were created through motion capture.

For help with the soundtrack, Bithell was able to contact David Housden through a mutual friend. Housden, who had just graduated from a university and was looking to get into game audio composition, provided a demo piece which became the game's credits theme. He subsequently went on to produce the remainder of the game's soundtrack. Housden initially had trouble in considering the arrangements for the game when he envisioned the characters as simple rectangles, but when he started attaching more humanlike attributes to them, he found it was much easier to compose the music towards these feelings. Bithell had wanted the soundtrack to be procedurally generated, which Housden found to be initially difficult; the two came up with the idea of using a procedurally generated assembly of multiple instrument tracks over a fixed song line to achieve the feel that Bithell wanted. With the success of *Thomas*, Housden had been called on to do more work for Bossa, composed the music for Bithell's subsequent game Volume, and has been signed onto a music outsourcing agency for television and movie productions.

### Ports

A port for [Linux](/wiki/Linux "Linux") operating systems was first released as part of a [Humble Bundle](/wiki/Humble_Bundle "Humble Bundle") package in May 2013\.

In February 2013, Bithell announced that *Thomas* would be released on the [PlayStation 3](/wiki/PlayStation_3 "PlayStation 3") and [PlayStation Vita](/wiki/PlayStation_Vita "PlayStation Vita"), and it was subsequently available in April 2013; the title features [cross buy](/wiki/Cross_buy "Cross buy"), allowing the player to buy the title once for both platforms. Additional time\-exclusive content with new levels and a new character named Benjamin who has [jetpack](/wiki/Jetpack "Jetpack")\-like abilities were included with this release. The Vita version supports the use of the touch screen to select the specific shapes or move the camera about. These releases were supported with work from Bossa and [Curve Studios](/wiki/Curve_Studios "Curve Studios"). Bithell credits Sony UK's senior business development manager Shahid Ahmad for helping to bring *Thomas* to the PlayStation consoles. In 2012, Ahmad was looking for content for the PlayStation Vita, and after encountering the April Fools' trailer for the game he reached out to Bithell, considering his novel use of marketing to be of interest. Bossa would continue to help develop a port of *Thomas* for [iOS](/wiki/IOS "IOS") devices that was released in May 2014\. Bithell was not sure of doing the iOS at first, but realized that with the game's success on the PlayStation platforms, he believed "it was connecting with people who wouldn't traditionally pick up a game on a console or \[personal computer]". He was also assured that the iOS port was a proper move after making sure the game felt right on the touch\-screen device and did not feel like a money grab. A port to Android devices was released in July 2014\.

The additional content for the PlayStation release was made available for free for owners of the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux versions of the game on 26 June 2014\.

The game was also released on [Xbox One](/wiki/Xbox_One "Xbox One"), [PlayStation 4](/wiki/PlayStation_4 "PlayStation 4") and [Wii U](/wiki/Wii_U "Wii U") in November 2014\.

In September 2016, it was announced that Bithell and distributor [Limited Run Games](/wiki/Limited_Run_Games "Limited Run Games") would release a physical version of *Thomas Was Alone* for the PlayStation 4 and Vita. The game, limited to 4,000 copies on each platform, was released exclusively on Limited Run's website as a mail\-in order title.

A [Nintendo Switch](/wiki/Nintendo_Switch "Nintendo Switch") version of the game was released on 19 February 2021, with a free demo being released beforehand on 29 January 2021\.


What is the role of Benjamin in the additional content?