Thomas Was Alone dev quits Bossa to pursue solo projects

Thomas Was Alone is the brainchild of coder Mike Bithell, and thanks to its success he has left Bossa Studios to work solo.

GI.biz reports that Bithell created the indie smash while teaching himself how to code in Unity, and left Bossa last week after joining the studio in February 2011 as lead designer.

Speaking with the site last Friday, Bithell said, "I'm talking to you just as I'm about to go for my leaving drinks. 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.

"It just feels like a really exciting time to go indie. I'd always wanted to go and do my own thing at some point, and once the financial stuff kind of made a bit more sense it felt like time to go and experiment.

"It's a time now where that's actually possible, it's possible to go off, make a game that's kind of niche and small but find an audience that likes it and then to continue doing that indefinitely. The kind of downloadable stuff that's available to you just makes that possible in a way that it's arguably never been before, which is very exciting."

Bithell isn't the first developer to go it alone, as we're now seeing many big name veterans taking matters into their own hands as indie coders or to found smaller studios. Cliff Bleszinski, Peter Molyneux, Keiji Inafune and Rob Bowling are a few names that spring to mind.

What do you make of Thomas Was Alone and Bithell's departure? Let us know below.