Thomas Was Alone comes to iPad
The minimalist indie puzzle platformer Thomas Was Alone, which won author and columnist Danny Wallace a BAFTA games award for his narration, is now available for the iPad.
Game developer Mike Bithell told Eurogamer that he created an iPad version shortly after the game released for the PC in 2012, but, it was “crap”.
“[Game engine] Unity has an export to iPad button, and it’s very tempting!” he said. “So I spent a weekend around the game’s release and did an iPad port. It was running on an iPad, but it was crap. It was technically there, but it felt wrong and it didn’t play well. It just wasn’t designed for the platform with all the obvious problems you’d expect from a platformer on an iPad.
“So, honestly, I wrote it off at that point. I was like, you know what? I’ll go to iPad at some point. I love my iPad and I’ll make something for it at some point, but this isn’t the game to do it with, and I just left it.”
Eurogamer says that the game’s interface has been reworked for the iPad touchscreen, alongside refined graphics to make use of the retina screen.
The Sixth Axis asks the most important question: how does it play on the iPad?
“Given that Thomas Was Alone is a rather simple game, it plays absolutely fine, and you’ll once again be tackling a stylish 2D platformer with rectangles and squares as the multifaceted main characters, backed up with some brilliantly scripted narration delivered by Danny Wallace, making these rectangles feel like real characters.
“If you haven’t played Thomas Was Alone before, and particularly if you don’t own a PlayStation Vita, then it’s really worth watching out for the iPad version. It’s not the greatest port and may be a bit more pricey than other platformers on the App Store, coming in at the same price as the other versions, £5.99, but it’s a decent length and makes up for it in tone, plot and presentation.”
