Thomas Was Alone was our favorite platformer of last year, but critical praise doesn’t always indicate good sales numbers. Well, as it turns out, the game must have sold a decent amount: Mike Bithell, the one-man developer behind Thomas Was Alone, has decided to quit his day job as lead designer at Bossa Studios to focus on indie development.
Thomas Was Alone was our favorite platformer of last year, but critical praise doesn’t always indicate good sales numbers. Well, as it turns out, the game must have sold a decent amount: Mike Bithell, the one-man developer behind Thomas Was Alone, has decided to quit his day job as lead designer at Bossa Studios to focus on indie development.
Bithell offered up a few details about his departure in an interview with GamesIndustry.
“Thomas did very well, not miraculously well, not FTL well, but kind of well enough and it’s given me enough money in the bank to go and see what I can do for a couple of years. So I’m going off to become a full indie,” he told them. And while no details about any forthcoming games were provided, Bithell mentioned that he has some ideas cooking in his head.
“There’s one specific genre for which I’ve been designing a game in my head for since I was eight, and then there’s definitely a lot of stuff that I learnt on Thomas to do with story and storytelling and character stuff that I kind of want to explore a bit more,” he said. I may have a bit of a bias in saying so (I reviewed and loved the game), but it’s exciting to hear that Bithell plans on further pursuing some of the storytelling aspects of Thomas Was Alone. The game’s narrative was delivered in a very interesting way – so much so that I deeply sympathized with all of the block characters by the end.
We’ll be sure to keep you all in the loop when Bithell reveals details about forthcoming projects, but until then, how about a hearty good luck to the new indie developer?
