It has been 21 years since American Mcgee's Alice first came out, showing a twisted story of Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland where the once innocent imaginative girl now is haunted by how her family died in a fire. Suffering through PTSD and survivor's guilt, Alice's Wonderland has become a hostile place full of disturbing monsters and merciless environments. In 2011, Mcgee released Alice: Madness Returns, which continues Alice's story but goes back and forth between the real world and Wonderland.
About 10 years later, fans are still waiting for a third game, as McGee himself mentioned that he always envisioned the series as a trilogy. The third game proposal, currently known as Alice: Asylum, has been publicly shared by McGee as lately as August 2021. The game has a ton of amazing concepts in terms of enemies, gameplay, costumes, weapons, characters, locations, and overall premise. McGee has hit many barriers for this third game, and nothing is promised yet, but the proposal looks the game fans have wanted for a long time.
The Proposed Premise
Originally, McGee planned for a third game to be a prequel to the series but that idea was scrapped and Alice: Asylum is currently planned to take place after Madness Returns. The most recent script McGee shared publicly has Alice suffering from amnesia after the events of the previous game. With this in mind, Alice: Asylum could answer questions left unanswered last time, such as why did Wonderland and London combine at the end? What is the fate of Pris Witless and Wilton Radcliffe? Also, what happened to the other children in the Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth?
As for the exploration of Wonderland, McGee released the idea of domains based on stages of grief, particularly the Kubler-Ross model that goes from shock to denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and then acceptance. The rough sketch of these domains is that shock would take the form of the Liddell house during the fire that killed Alice's family. For denial, McGee proposed an amusement park and for anger, the Queen's Castle. The Hatter's domain would be bargaining, the Vale of Tears would be depression, and a Land of Fire and Brimstone would be the testing stage.
Proposed Characters
Characters both old and new are all over McGee's latest draft. New characters include a Shadow Alice, Radcliffe's young daughter, and a Red King and Queen. The King and Queen, in some of the concept art, appear to look like Alice's deceased parents. There also seems to be a rabbit doll companion that will follow Alice around throughout the story.
However, since it would be the last Alice game, there are far more familiar faces than there are new ones. The Tweedle twins have a lot of concept art of them in the amusement park domain idea. There is also plenty of concept art of the Queen of Hearts, who has been in the previous two games. Concept art that McGee has shared also includes the Jabberwock, Mad Hatter, Chesire Cat, Bumby, and Radcliffe.
Proposed Gameplay
The gameplay McGee has planned so far looks quite similar to the previous titles with a lot of action, puzzles, and mini-games. As usual, it seems Alice will use toys as weapons with McGee sharing many ideas on his Patreon such as a stuffed flamingo, ice shaver, nutcracker, throwable cards, and whipping top. Power-up items have also been thought of, such as cakes adding HP.
McGee has also mentioned the goal of making the first playthrough of the game about 10 to 12 hours to beat. He wants the game to be high quality with strong pacing and makes no plans to sacrifice that quality for a longer game. Though, he did say that DLC is not out of the question. What is out of the question are loot boxes and microtransactions. As for multiplayer, he has remained neutral and mentioned just focusing on single-player for right now.
How Development Is Going
For the past 10 years, the development of the game has been a slow slog. Fans petitioned EA twice about letting McGee make his last Alice game with thousands of signatures. EA has been a difficult hurdle, as Spicy Horse is the independent developer that worked under them to make the previous two games and has since disbanded after Madness Returns. So McGee lost his former developers and EA has not been working well with him. It needs a demo, which McGee can not afford on his own and EA does not accept any demos that are made by crowdfunding.
McGee has been quite active on Patreon in his updates and has been collecting funds to make the game a reality. His goal is to build a production and design plan, get the plan approved by EA, and raise funds to develop the game. A crowdfunding campaign is likely on the horizon, until then, fans eagerly await all of McGee's Patreon updates.
American McGee's Alice is available to play on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.