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Of all the developers to head up a John Wick game, Mike Bithell of Thomas Was Alone, Subsurface Circular and Volume is not one I could have predicted. John Wick Hex also looks like a bit of an oddball, genre-wise. It's a pseudo-turn-based tactics game, with players planning Keanu Reeves's every move in order to dodge, parry and shoot his way through each gunfight with maximum…
Quarantine Circular is the surprise sequel to Subsurface Circular, and it’s out right now
Mike Bithell (originally of Thomas Is Alone fame) clearly likes his surprise launches. His previous game, the short-but-sweet sci-fi mystery adventure Subsurface Circular launched onto Steam with zero fanfare or warning, but racked up no shortage of praise and awards. Today, its successor - Quarantine Circular - quietly released onto Steam, and it looks similarly great. It's not quite a sequel, though, more a spiritual successor…
After telling stories about shapes then even a teenager, the fella behind Thomas Was Alone and Volume has taken another step up the consciousness scale for his next story with a game about robots. Bithell's studio today both announced and launched Subsurface Circular [official site], a short text adventure starring a robot detective investigating missing robots. It's a text-based story-o-puzzler where you gather new words…
Feature: A stealth puzzler with delusions of grandeur.
Volume [official site] is a third-person, sci-fi stealth game, in which you direct a little dude around VR-styled, maze-like levels, dodging guards with wits and with gadgetry, with the aim of grabbing all the loot and getting out again. It's out now. I hope Mike 'Thomas Was Alone' Bithell's new game wasn't hoping to pre-empt any 'turn down the...' gags by hiring a celebrity voice…
I like Thomas Was Alone, Mike Bithell's melancholy tale of identity and shapely destiny, but I wasn't particularly surprised by the backlash. I'm referring, of course, to this quote from Bithell himself. I thought I was writing a competent story with an amazing platform game. It turned out it was the other way around! I didn’t realise it would get the attention it did, which…
Feature: Way beyond rectangles
“It will probably be the only time in my life when I have no responsibilities, didn’t owe anyone any money, didn’t have staff that I had to worry about. Absolute freedom to do what I want. I wasn’t going to use that to make a sequel to a reasonably well-received puzzle-platformer.” I’ve asked Volume lead Mike Bithell if he’s been worried about over-reaching himself. 2012’s…
When I last spoke to Mike Bithell, we were in the café at the National Media Museum in Bradford. He had just delivered a talk about his upcoming Virtual Robin Hood game, Volume, but we found time to discuss Thomas Was Alone as well. Bithell said - and I agree - "I thought I was writing a competent story with an amazing platform game. It…
Feature: Bithell's Turning It Up To Eleven
Mike Bithell, creator of Thomas Was Alone, knows a lot about Robin Hood. As we sit in a Starbucks five thousand miles from either of our homes, his tank-like laptop greedily drinking electricity from the coffee store's wall, I find myself scribbling notes not about his upcoming stealth puzzler Volume, but about how it wasn't until King Henry VIII took a shine to the story…
Feature: The Ethics Of Robin Hood
Mike Bithell's stealth game, Volume, looks like a very different prospect to Thomas Was Alone, even if there might be some similarities in the audio department. A retelling of the Robin Hood story, Volume takes place in a Britain laced with political dissent, rebellion and fancy volumetric display devices. Upon discovering such a device, Robert Locksley sets out to livestream heists and infiltrations, teaching the…
Feature: The Misadventures Of The 'Free The Games Fund'
Something strange is afoot in the land of OUYA. The Kickstarted console, running on Android, is obviously not usually in RPS's purview. But a recently launched incentive to get developers to create OUYA games is treading on our toes, and merits a look. OUYA's Free The Games Fund offers to match money raised by Kickstarted games, if they can reach a minimum of $50,000, in…
I was extremely disappointed to miss last year's GameCity. Everybody I've spoken to who was there speaks about it in reverent tones. Actually, scratch that, there's no reverence at all. It's happiness, the remembered joy of sharing a splendid, creative, social hobby with a wide array of pleasant people. I won't make the same mistake this year, although I'll probably only visit for one or…
Feature: Up To Eleven
The maker of successful geometrical emotions simulator Thomas Was Alone, Mike Bithell, has revealed today that his next game will be Volume, a Metal Gear Solid-style stealth tactics game. The game is designed, coded and written by Mike and scored by David Housden. Based on burgling futuristic trinkets from behind the backs of tall intimidating AI types, the unnamed hero of Volume wants to steal…
Feature: Stop doubting Thomas
Thomas Was Alone and he was also a Flash game but now he’s grown up and it’s time for him to meet some new friends and set off on a journey that will change them all forever. It’s a tale of friendship, co-operation, sentience and rivalry, but is it possible to care about a gang of abstract shapes and the puzzling environments they traverse? Here’s…
Thomas Was Alone first came to my attention while I was trying not to watch the GTA V trailer six thousand times to work out if one of the character models was a fatter, older version of an important bloke from a previous entry in the series. I wasn't sure whether a platform game about quadrilateral quandaries was all that interesting but David Housden's music…
Phew. I ran here as fast as I could. I know the entire internet is waiting for the hottest new trailer in town but some git thieved my automocar so I've had to come by foot. Here it is then. Thomas Was Alone is an upcoming indie game "about friendship and jumping", with a cast of angular shapes working together to make their way through…
