Hands On: Down the rabbit hole with Alice Madness Returns

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 26 May 2011 14:24

Entertainment

I'm late, I'm late for a very important date.  The traditional mythos of Alice In Wonderland imagery is saturated with Disney's interpretation.  But American McGee and his company Spicy Horse has realised a darker, more psychodrama way to present Alice and her mind demons.  Alice Madness Returns is a new encapsulation of McGee's fascination with Alice, and the new game features a surprise for fans of the original.

At a recent EA event I was able to get some hands on time with the Spicy Horse developed Alice: Madness Returns, the latest iteration of a project that Spicy Horse CEO and Senior Creative Director, American McGee has been working on for over a decade.

McGee is obviously fascinated with bringing a darker vision of Wonderland to digital life.  As you can see in our accompanying interview with McGee and the projects Art Director Ken Wong, there was a huge focus on the imagery injected into this game.  Working with Wonderland empowered the art team to really go for it when it came to character and location designs.

This is evident from the beginning. The troubled Alice and here story of mistreatment and misfortune are told to us in cut scenes utilising art reminiscent of the classic John Tenniel illustrated versions of Lewis Carroll's famous tale.

On November 5, 1863, Alice Liddell was severely burned in the fire that destroyed her family home in Oxford, and took the lives of her parents and her older sister, Lizzie. While the girl's seared skin gradually healed during a year of hospitalization, the trauma caused by her family's horrific demise deepened.

So we pick up the controller and are thrust into Alice's mind, into the astonishing and dangerous world of Wonderland.  The Spicy Horse art team has gone to great lengths to create a surreal and beautiful environment, not unlike a high definition version of Warren Spector's Epic Mickey on the Nintendo Wii.

Blessed with more processing power however, the Spicy Horse team give us a vast array of landscapes, and more importantly enemies to battle.  Alice herself takes on an array of looks over the course of the game, changing dresses along the way, but remaining her every sour Goth styled self.

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