If Alice: Madness Returns was lifeless on arrival, that will at the least be aesthetically constant.
The 2011 sequel to American McGee’s Alice went even deeper into Alice in Wonderland’s crimson guts than the primary recreation, pulling out probably the most nightmarish features of the Victorian kids’s story and tying their shadows right into a neat action-adventure. But it suffered from abysmal launch sales, with reviewers and fans each being dissatisfied by what they felt have been tough controls and degree design.
Still, recreation designer American McGee wasn’t giving up.
McGee, who created the collection after being fired by id Software, hoped to assemble sufficient neighborhood assist for a follow-up, and probably the most diehard Alice believers gave it to him in spades. But after a decade of this slicing fan stress, writer EA lastly decided in 2023: there could be no extra Alice video games. They blamed the “evaluation of the IP” and market circumstances.
Was it throughout? Would Alice need to lie facedown within the graveyard as soon as and for all? Not precisely. Alice: Madness Returns would not simply reside, it thrives.
“Even although EA was going to let Alice die,” says 33-year-old Twitch streamer Foxfire47, who has been a fan of the collection for the reason that first recreation launched in 2000, “the followers have been completely not.”
She credit Madness Returns’ vigorous on-line fanbase to McGee himself. He started engaged on a proposal for a possible follow-up, Alice: Asylum, in 2017, and inspired followers to contact EA straight to point out their assist. His now retired Patreon incorporates all the opposite methods he incentivized followers to deepen their obsession, like referring to the fandom as “Insane Children” and finally posting an Alice: Asylum design bible bursting with art.
His otherworldly design is at the least one cause why followers may by no means actually abandon Madness Returns, or the Alice collection typically. They are a stunning testomony to the truth that anybody can survive the worst factor that is ever occurred to them.
Friendships and bonds
Foxfire47 found Madness Returns’ on-line fan base by McGee’s Patreon in 2018. She remembers feeling McGee’s pleasure for Asylum bleeding into her preexisting enthusiasm for the collection, and it did the identical for everybody she met over Patreon and Discord.
“Friendships and bonds have been made by Alice: Asylum,” Foxfire47 says.
When EA in the end handed on the challenge, they have been additionally rejecting a complete neighborhood that had put years and cash into materializing a shared dream. But McGee had educated his followers to grow to be personally invested, and an IP problem appeared small within the face of their dedication.
“After [EA rejected Asylum],” Foxfire47 says, “I really feel that, as followers for Alice, we wished to maintain the spirit of the video games alive. With the camaraderie of this neighborhood, we’re at all times going to point out our love for these video games.”
The neighborhood now sustains Madness Returns by YouTube movies with millions of views, pouty TikTok fancams with tons of of 1000’s of likes, detailed cosplay, tattoos, and different tangible strategies of worship. All of this online word-of-mouth has helped Alice followers reach an unprecedented aim. They are actively gathering new followers for an deserted, 24-year-old franchise telling the unusual horror story of an orphan teenager, Alice, who retreats into an hallucinated Wonderland.
“I purchased Alice: Madness Returns, and I’m taking part in the primary one for the primary time due to your cosplay!” one commenter just lately informed common TikTok cosplayer Jessilyn Cupcake. In current years, she’s made and shared a number of Alice cosplays together with her keen followers, together with Alice’s ultramarine tea dress and the yowling Hobby Horse hammer from Madness Returns. She first discovered Madness Returns in 2011, telling IGN that she “fell in love instantly.”
“It nonetheless feels trendy and a contemporary take regardless of being 15 years outdated,” Jessilyn says. “I feel [its] hack-and-slash-style gameplay with a number of weapons, costumes, and skills is likely one of the finest examples in a recreation, ever.”
The recreation is an intoxicating mix of lethal and delicate, very similar to its most well-known weapon, the lace-patterned Vorpal Blade – a chef’s knife for short-range combat. In Madness Returns, traumatized 19-year-old Alice should tackle the kid intercourse trafficker and psychiatrist Dr. Bumby, who tries to trick her into insanity in an effort to commodify her physique. But Alice learns to wield her fragile energy in opposition to any abomination.
Alice’s potential to work by her ache and sort out any drawback, from baby dolls that vomit to harmful males, is a part of her underdog attraction. And McGee accessorizes Alice’s hypnotic visions with touches just like the creamy, white bow behind her bloodspattered apron, and the crystal-blue butterflies within the misty, tree-covered Vale of Tears.
Though Madness Returns the sport has been out for years, the preferred manner for followers to publicly be a part of collectively is by trying on the tiniest recreation particulars by a magnifying glass. On TikTok, a scene reveals Alice hallucinates having her cranium drilled open on the corrupt Rutledge Asylum. The digicam lingers on swollen leeches in jars. Alice seems to be dazed in slow-motion, with make-up staining her pores and skin like a bruise, and moved viewers provide the video with 43,000 likes.
“SAVE ALICE ASYLUM PETITION,” says the preferred remark.
Madness Returns YouTube movies likewise prioritize evaluation of the sport’s visuals and story. One 51-minute video by video essayist Boulder Punch spends virtually half of its runtime on collection “highlights,” praising its surreal platforming and aching orchestral rating.
YouTuber BlackRose was amongst these captivated by its “stunning, grungy art work” when she recorded her first YouTube episode with it in 2023, main her to suggest it to her 111,000 followers.
“I used to be instantly hooked,” she tells IGN. “One specific a part of the sport that sticks with me vividly was when Alice grew to become an enormous after consuming [enchanted Eat Me cake in] Queensland. I had a great deal of enjoyable changing into huge and terrorizing all of the enemy card guards whereas I laughed maniacally for having a lot energy.”
Master of the macabre
“The artwork route of the 2 Alice video games are undoubtedly what struck me probably the most [about them] — that darkish, gothic type that blends objects of childhood with violence and the macabre,” says Maria, who runs the horror gaming YouTube channel eurothug4000.
McGee’s defunct Shanghai-based video games studio, Spicy Horse, specialised within the distinctive type that gave Alice life. Aside from the Alice collection, the developer additionally (considerably unpopularly) turned a number of Brothers Grimm tales into platformers, whereas padding them with intriguing, cartoonish gore. But American McGee’s: Alice is what actually established Spicy Horse as a purveyor of cute brooding. Madness Returns’ artwork director Ken Wong was definitely impressed by it.
After Wong created Alice fanart in 2000, McGee took discover, and the 2 labored on designs collectively for a number of years. And on Madness Returns, “we noticed a possibility with the visuals to create one thing that was violent and horrific, but additionally stunning and stuffed with creativeness,” Wong says. “Wonderland is such an incredible setting.”
“I’m biased because the artwork director,” Wong continues. “But in 2024, I feel it is price taking part in Madness Returns to expertise an actual visible feast. We have been pushed to unleash our imaginations and discover some actually darkish locations, and I feel the sport we created has a few of the most stunning environments and a few of the most f’ed up characters I’ve ever seen in a recreation.”
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Though the content material of its story suggests defiance of its lineage, Madness Returns nonetheless shares its core with Alice in Wonderland, the concept being a woman in an grownup atmosphere feels surreal. Because of this, actress Susie Brann, who voiced Alice in each video games, tells IGN over electronic mail that she “wished to deliver to life the Alice [she’d] examine as a baby.”
“I noticed her as frank, well mannered, nicely introduced up, curious, sincere and adventurous,” says Brann. “I used to be conscious that there was a terrific disparity between the innocence and truthfulness of Alice and the horror that was occurring round her. But being conscious that she had skilled actual horror within the lack of her dad and mom in such a horrific manner, the video games may very well be seen as an outworking of what was occurring in her thoughts. Maybe bringing some type of closure, if not therapeutic, to her thoughts.”
The unique Alice in Wonderland gives a roadmap to kids hoping to detangle the weird world of grown-ups. Madness Returns has, in flip, grow to be a cornerstone information for ladies who’ve discovered to grow to be distrustful of the white rabbit that led them to it. Fans on-line gush about the way in which Madness Returns handles trauma, which is, to this present day, uncommonly nonjudgmental and empowering.While the villainous Bumby forces Madness Returns’ Alice to endure from gendered grief, she by no means permits it to contaminate all of who she is. She’s extra of a goth function mannequin than a tragic hero, and in followers’ appreciation of her, she’s been capable of be a part of Alice in Wonderland as a fairytale traditional.
Some followers have even grown up with Madness Returns the way in which different kids, for greater than a century, have had Alice in Wonderland learn to them at bedtime. That was the case for twenty-two-year-old Johnnie, whose mother had been taking part in Alice video games since earlier than they have been born. They first performed it themselves after they have been solely 5 years outdated.
These days, Johnnie appreciates how “[Alice] is not sexualized, demonized, or saved by a person,” they are saying. “All of her therapeutic is completed on her personal, and I’ve at all times cherished and appreciated that. […] Alice as a collection, I consider, sparked a variety of dialogue round trauma, psychosis, and psychological well being and offered that secure area for individuals who have suffered too with out being painted as a villain.”
Twenty-three-year-old Brynlee Daigle agrees. She’s cherished Madness Returns since begging her mother to purchase it in 2012. Now, she discusses it with buddies on Discord and does Alice roleplay on Tumblr. “One facet of the sport that also sticks with me is the vital message about psychological well being, that irrespective of when you’re disabled, or severely traumatized, you’ll be able to overcome any impediment in your manner.”
“It’s why I’ve the [American McGee’s Alice] Jabberwocky [boss] battle tattooed on my thigh,” she continues. “It’s there to remind me I can at all times defeat my inside demons.”
A neighborhood lives on with out its unique creator
Though he is helped Madness Returns sprout a loyal and hopeful neighborhood, McGee himself would possibly favor to let Alice’s reminiscence fade, like ink. In an electronic mail to IGN, a consultant for McGee declined a request for remark, as a substitute citing a recent YouTube video as McGee’s “last phrase on the matter” (after that, McGee acknowledged the “depth of Alice followers” in relation to this text on Twitter). In the video, McGee describes being “emotionally, fairly destroyed” after EA rejected his community-backed proposal for a 3rd recreation.
Though McGee as soon as welcomed followers’ ardor whereas recruiting assist for his Patreon, EA’s rejection has understandably lower down his persistence for it. He at the moment treats followers’ eagerness like he would a slack-jawed Frankenstein – a creation that would by no means meet his desires and wishes.
“Alice followers are inclined to have problem studying what I’m saying in relation to how a lot I DO NOT wish to make video games anymore,” he wrote on Twitter on April 24.
Fans have discovered to deal with his chilly shoulder. Most of the which means they derive from Madness Returns is private anyway.
“Many of the lively followers I’ve seen on-line are ladies,” says Maria, “and American McGee’s Alice goes by quite a bit as a younger girl rising up in a world working in opposition to her.”
“I feel each girl can relate to some facet of [Alice] in a manner,” she continues, “that feeling of one thing taken from them, that feeling of not seeming such as you’re in management […] as a result of you’re a girl.” So followers are grateful for what already exists. “If there’s one factor I would like folks to remove from taking part in [Madness Returns],” says Jessilyn, “is that working by trauma — irrespective of how laborious or silly it’s — could be price it.”
“If one thing is true, it’s true all the time,” Brann says. “If the sport resonates with folks and helps them work by and go away behind a few of their turmoil, understanding themselves extra and what they’ve been by, that’s obtained to be a superb factor.”
Ashley Bardhan is a contract author at IGN
