Dear Insane Children,

Strange Days indeed. I hope you’re all staying safe and warm somewhere. Share your situation in the comments below. We need to hear from each other and support each other – now more than ever! 

Here in Shanghai, we’re OK. Our 14-day home isolation period ended on Saturday night. On Sunday, we drove into the city center. The drive from Qingpu to the heart of Shanghai usually takes about an hour – though it’s only 18km in distance. This weekend? It took us about 20 minutes from door-to-door. That’s crazy! I’ve not seen traffic (or lack of it) like that in 10+ years. The streets are empty. And the restaurant where we went for lunch… only had guests at 4 tables (out of about 50).

Things are certainly not back to “normal” here in Shanghai. 

What’s it like where you are? 

I Am Become Death

Omri started work on a new illustration (main image above) and I wrote some notes: 

I like it as a start. That Mercury symbol… is related to War and Anger. 

The arms remind me of Vishnu. “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

For the musical notes I recommend you listen to (and borrow score from): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a53s4jyCqqU

(Richard Wagner – Götterdämmerung – Siegfried’s Funeral March)

Götterdämmerung (German: [??œt??d?m????]; Twilight of the Gods),[1] WWV 86D, is the last in Richard Wagner’s cycle of four music dramas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Ring for short).

The title is a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarök, which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war among various beings and gods that ultimately results in the burning, immersion in water, and renewal of the world.

War is Chaos. War leads to Death. Death is Dissolution. Dissolution leads to Rebirth. 

Run with that! 

Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on Omri’s illustration and my feedback. 

GHOSTS V AND VI

Many of you are, like me, fans of Nine Inch Nails and their various spin-offs and influences. One of our supporters (thanks, Tom Resnick) brought to my attention that NIN just released TWO FREE ALBUMS of amazing instrumental music. 

Perfect mood music for our efforts on Alice: Asylum! 

And… the march of the pigs… 

In The Mood

Now that you’re in the mood for Asylum work…

I sent this email to the Asylum team yesterday:   

It’s taken me two weeks since my return from Thailand to catch up on all things Mysterious, shipping, and biz/legal/finance here in Shanghai. But I finally have a clear calendar and relatively open task list so… we can get back to work on Asylum. Yay! 

As you all know, the deal with (Insert Hollywood TV/film group) fell through. But at the same time that deal was going away, we got a note from EA Australia about another media company (REDACTED Productions) who are interested in Alice as a TV/film project. That interest also means EA (a different team from the one we’ve been working with) is taking a fresh look at Alice and the progress we’ve made so far. 

There are also some nibbles from the guys at Epic. And here’s news to explain why… 

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epic-games-publishing-announcement

For both the EA and Epic conversations, we would really benefit from the Game Design Bible being in a more complete state. In the time since we started fleshing out Asylum, we’ve put together tons of great art, design ideas, and story snippets… but it’s time to bring it all together into a document we can share with potential financiers and publishers. 

That effort has started inside this Google Doc: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D-5-F1QzCbh9EgDeRJmvLqrJMdgqezMcIL2YZEf-aww/edit?usp=sharing

See the attached PDF for an example from Alex of what the final Design Bible will look like in terms of final format, layout, and content. 

The Google Doc currently contains a copy/paste of all the content collected over on the Alice: Asylum Wiki. Going forward, we’ll put our story, art, design efforts into the Google Doc – that means that work on the wiki (including Crowd Design) will pause for the duration of this phase. We need to refine and condense all of our ideas. That content can then be filtered into the Design Bible itself.

Already you can see that this provides a much more presentable format for our efforts. 

To manage this process, we’re going to take schedule and task guidance from Alex. He’s working on setting up a project management structure using Monday (monday.com) and invites to that system will be sent to you all soon. 

Omri will continue working with the artists to provide direction and to produce key concept images. 

Artists keep making art! ? 

While all of this is going on, we still need to feed the Patreon machine. That’s where we get the bulk of the funding for our team’s overhead. Art Prints are a big part of this – so we’ll want to make sure that there are plenty of Key Concepts which can be converted into Art Prints – the “Tea Port” illustration from Dario or Omri’s “Judgement” are good examples of this. A section will be added in Monday for this as well.

So… expect to see an invite to Monday soon. And then you’ll see tasks related to all of this appearing in Monday. 

These are strange days. But we are – so far – fortune to have the support of our Patrons and a clear mission in front of us to keep our minds and hands occupied. 

Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions. 

Now… I am going to get to work on some story stuff! 

—

That should give you (and the team) a clear idea of what we’re doing in the coming months. 

I’ve attached the Alice3_Book_Draft PDF to this post. And you can click on the link above for the Google Doc where we’re putting all this effort. 

THANK YOU

I know I say it often but I really can’t say it enough. Especially in this crazy time. 

Your support makes it possible for a team of EIGHT People (Norm, Alex, Omri, Jen, Martin, Joey, Dario, American) to focus their creative energies on the Alice: Asylum project. 

You’re keeping the lights on at a time when so many people and businesses are forced to close up shop. We’re lucky to have a production model suited to this situation. But luckier still to have the support and trust of our Insane Children!

I am truly humbled. And I sincerely hope that our efforts and output match your hopes and expectations. 

Let me know in the comments below your thoughts on what I’ve outlined here. Are there areas where you’d like to see improvements? Things that are unclear? 

Tell me! I’m listening 🙂 

OH, Live Streams!

Yes, I know many of you are hoping for a Live Stream again soon. I will work on the tech issues related to that today. And will aim to host one on my Thursday (Wednesday in the US) at the usual time (around 6PM PST) … if everything is running smoothly. Expect an update on that as soon as I make sure all systems are A-OK. 

From Shanghai with Humble Appreciation, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

American here with a quick note… 

I just spent the week picking, packing, labeling, and shipping out a huge number of art prints. Pretty sure that was the single largest batch of orders ever to be sent out the door at one time. Woo! 

Big THANK YOU to Yan’s mom for helping me with all that plus juggling Lucky. Yay!

BUT… wait… 

Before we get too excited. A couple of things: 

Closing Borders

China just closed itself off from the outside world. Like – literally – you can’t fly into China now. They limited all countries to only one (1) incoming flight per country per week – and that’s only for essential/emergency travel situations. 

Since all the planes will stop flying IN that means… a lot of the packages we’re trying to get OUT will just get stuck on the ground. We don’t know how many because these packages take a variety of routes on their way to the world outside. Some via air, some via sea, and some via ground, air, sea and a combo of all three! 

Our logistics partners are urging us to stop trying to send stuff until all this blows over. 

At the same time, they are saying that the packages we’re sending WILL get through… just much, much more slowly. Like 30+ days slowly. 

So keep that in mind if you are waiting on an art print (or prints). 

New Stuff

I do have some new stuff related to the Design Bible that I plan to announce in the next few days. Basically outlining how we’re going to push to get that fully fleshed out over the next couple of months. And what that means for things like Crowd Design and our Live Streams.

Speaking of… 

Live Stream!

Wew it’s been a long time since we did one of those! And it’s also something I have in the plans for next week. It’ll have to be sans-Font Lord (Martin Sans) since we’re still not allowed outside visitors in my housing compound. 

But I’ll figure out a way to get him involved. And you too! 

Let me know in the comments below if there’s anything special you’d like discussed in the next stream. Got questions? Ideas? Put them in the comments below. 

But first… I need a bit of a rest. 

From Behind the Great Wall of China, 

-American

Hi there

Font Lord here again with just a little update on what’s currently going on in this neck of the woods for those who don’t know   🙂

As the main image up there at the top suggests, we are in the final 4 or so days for the Enamel Pin goal.
And as you may know from previous posts, you now no longer have to change your tier if you want to get these. We have worked with Backerkit to make this choice happen for everyone who’s a Patron this month.
Read more about that HERE, but basically, those above $35 will automatically get the pins, and those below $35 can make up the difference on Backerkit in April.
The only reason you might want to change your tier is if you want to get some of the benefits of being at a higher tier, such as getting the print of the month which is…

UnHappiness

This is certainly in my top 3 prints.

And speaking of prints.
The reason you might not have read so much from American recently is that he’s currently up to his eyeballs in signing and shipping out backlog of about 2 months of prints. Yikes !
Let’s all take a moment of silence to pray for his wrist.

We hope to get American back up and running and out from under a mountain of shipping tubes in the coming days, so look out for some more posts from him here in the not too distant future talking about how we’re moving forwards and what’s going on while the world is in its current nonsense state.

And just quickly if you didn’t know, we did actually put a couple of those Letterman jackets into the Mysterious shop from all your feedback in the previous poll post I made.
Thanks for taking the time to vote and such.
Always great to know we’re on the right track with our Inmates  🙂

So that’ll just about do it from me.
Stay safe out there, wash your hands regularly and don’t lick stranger’s faces.

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

One of those things I always end up pondering when I’m in “altered states” is the fractal organization of the universe. The idea that patterns of organization (shapes, ratios, distances) repeat on scales that range from galactic to microscopic. And that it stands to reason that we, as an expression of the universal pattern, might find reflections of the idea in unexpected places – say in our moods, emotional responses, interpersonal relationships, physical health, and life events. 

Do we honestly expect all these universal mechanisms to suddenly STOP at the door of our conscious experience? And if these mechanisms do continue then what might that mean for the explorers of the mental landscape? Perhaps there’s a larger map of meaning to be found in the expressions and experiences mankind repeatedly expresses across generations of fables and religions.

Dark Crystals

Joey recently sent along a bit of inspiration – not really linked to any particular location or narrative element in our narrative (yet). But it provides an interesting point of reference to the notion I described above. Namely…

Crystals represent order. A crystal lattice is the essence of order. Could be that Hatter asks Alice to trace the source of the material (crystal) that the globe is made from. These shapes are also fractal… they contain repeating patterns that are observable from the macro to the micro. The picture Joey’s drawn is a good example… are those giant crystals or is Alice small and they are tiny ones? This is a topic I’d like to explore in the narrative and design – scale, perspective, and the fractal nature of information and reality. 

Nature is a fantastic place to explore these notions since nature is an explosive expression of fractal self-organizing patterns. We’ve already touched on aspects of nature=psychology=nature in our use of Alchemy throughout the Alice games. That’s why it’s there – because it makes physical the elements and processes of transformation. And, as we all know, transformation is life. 

One of my favorite things about telling stories in Wonderland is that everything exists in a dreamlike state. Alice’s surreal reality becomes a metaphor for everything she’s ever known or experienced. An interface for the direct examination and manipulation of her definition of self. 

Like a naturalist-chemist, she can collect, study, and ultimately understand the very nature of her self. 

Elements of Discovery

Of course, this is a GAME and we need to dress up all these concepts in fun and engaging art and mechanics. Here’s some art…

As for mechanics… 

Crowd Design Time! Share your ideas. How might you construct a system to game-ify the collection, combination, and use of these elements? How might that fit into an overarching goal representing Alice’s journey to understand herself? 

Lots of great art from Joey here. Let her know in the comments below your thoughts and feedback! 

From Self Isolation in Shanghai, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

One interesting thing about this virus whole situation is that it might just push the world into a New Mode of Being. Maybe we don’t need to all go to an office every day? Or we can telecommute to that meeting in Paris? Maybe game development teams of hundreds can be spread out to multiple homes and small studios around the world? Perhaps physical retailers are a thing of the past? For example…

I read this morning that Amazon is hiring 100,000 new distribution workers to keep up with online shopping demand during the time of coronavirus. 

Here in China, the existing online retail/delivery mechanisms really helped make the transition to National Quarantine much easier.  And it’s helped companies shift towards more a work-at-home and shop-at-home lifestyle. If you look at the pollution maps of China you’ll see that this has very positive knock-on effects for the environment. 

And guess what? Here in The Asylum… we’ve already been doing the whole online-community-driven design-production-shipping thing. Yay!

Don’t be surprised if you, me, and our community of Insane Children become a model for the next phase of creative development. 

Distraction Time

Let’s put what we’ve built to good use! What you need right now is something to distract you from the TP Hordes and madness outside. And our creative team has just the thing (many things actually… tons of art and design piled up in the time since I went all Waterworld on you). 

BOOM! Let’s start with an Exploding Baby Walrus! He’s cute, cuddly, and explody. You can carry him, throw him, and watch him go BOOM!

This is first in a set of weapon concepts where our artists are inventing art/story layers to put atop our list of required weapons and items. As Omri says… 

OK i had a talk with American on how they came up with the ideas for the weapons on Madness. So we are going to do the same kind of process to achieve the best result. As all the weapons have specific actions anyway and their designs are only aesthetic.

Keep the sketches fast, cool, Only aesthetic, let’s see how it looks like. From that pile we will fish out the ones we all love and use those. Have fun and go crazy but Please don’t incorporate Doll parts into the designs, it’s too “early” we won’t be visiting that realm.

The list of weapons we’re trying to skin include:  

1. A Clock Bomb
2. A Long Ranged attack
3. A Long Ranged Bomb
4. A Heavy Melee weapon(the Flamingo i think is good, we need to explore options)
5. A Short ranged Melee weapon (Vorpal Blade)
6. A Shield
7. A Stealth Distraction object (Percussion frogs sound pretty cool)
8. Specials: DeathTime, Old weapons, incorporate specific weapons when we have Mods on like Rage or Chaos.

(Note to Jen: Jabber Grabber!) 

The last one here Jen called an Astronomy Projection Umbrella and she says it works as a shield/umbrella but could also be used to blind and stun enemies. 

Crowd Design Drive… Engage!

Now it’s your turn! 

Add your ideas, notes, and suggestions in the comments below. Can you come up with cute and punny names for the weapons shown here? Do you have ideas for other creative ways to fill the list of weapon slots? What other cute and innocent animals would make for good bombs, flame throwers, and shields? 

Give us your suggestions. A few of them might even get the Jen Treatment. 

How about a baby elephant with an Extend-o-Trunk that Alice can use to grab, swing, and whip? Elphant Terrible? Maybe with a dual-use Poop Patty function to drop sticky poo traps? 

Suggested Reading

Looking for a book to read (or listen to) while in quarantine? I am currently re-reading (actually listening to it this time) “Chaos” by James Gleick. It’s a fascinating and compelling journey through the process of inventing a new way of looking at the universe. And it contains LOTS of concepts which apply to the narrative we’re crafting for Alice: Asylum. Have a read (or listen) and you’ll understand what I mean.

It’s on Audible or Amazon. 

Listen carefully when you reach the section on the nature of light and color. Newton and Goethe described their observations of the color spectrum in two very different but ultimately compatible ways. 

As we grapple with concepts like The Shadow Self… think on this: 

Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe didn’t see darkness as an absence of light, but rather as polar to and interacting with light; colour resulted from this interaction of light and shadow. For Goethe, light is “the simplest most undivided most homogeneous being that we know. Confronting it is the darkness” (Letter to Jacobi). 

Sure to keep your brain occupied in a more productive way than binge-watching Netflix for days on end! 

From Shanghai with Lucky & Lulu,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

This afternoon Yan and I will begin our journey from Thailand to China and hope to arrive home in Shanghai sometime tonight. We’ve sent all the Pirates home safely from Pirate Jam – a huge stress off my shoulders. Chaos is packed up and ready to go into the boatyard for the summer – she took really good care of me during my two month Golden Exile. Our bags are packed, our flight still on schedule… 

And we both can’t wait to get home to Lucky! 

It’s strange how this coronavirus situation has changed over the past weeks. When news first broke, I thought China was the last place I wanted to be. Now that the situation there seems under control in China, and the rest of the world is apparently descending into madness – why hoard toilet paper?!?! – I’m actually relieved to be heading back to a place where they’ve got serious measures in place to deal with the issue. 

I will try to capture some of today’s journey in pictures and video to share what the experience is like.

Now that Pirate Jam 2020 is finished you can head over to my YouTube channel where there’s a Pirate Jam Playlist containing all the episodes we created this year. These are shorter format, with greater emphasis on our Pirates, their adventures, and their games.

What’s not captured in those videos – and was kept mostly hidden from our guests – was all the drama taking place behind the scenes. Leading up to the event we had lots of guests canceling, boats breaking down, cooks threatening to mutiny, and more… All the stuff I will cover in an upcoming livestream where we play all the great games that were produced. Those games will eventually get uploaded to the Pirate Jam itch.io Page.

Back to the Asylum

It’s been difficult to focus on Asylum work while in the midst of all the aforementioned madness. But now that I’m headed back to the studio in Shanghai, I am excited to catch up on all things “Alice” and to sync up with our team. We’ll resume our efforts on Asylum design and planning – I’ll restart the conversations with potential financiers and publishers (though it’s difficult to imagine we’ll get much traction while virus panic is gripping the world). And we’ll get back on our regular schedule of YouTube streams and Discord design sessions. 

I really appreciate your patience and understanding during this unusual time. 

And now that I’m heading home… I hope to repay your kindness with lots of content and interaction – just the kind of stuff you might need if you happen to be locked down in some toilet paper battleground. 

From Thailand with Love, 

-American