Dear Insane Children, 

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I appreciate your well wishes. Seems your prayers worked or something – because the typhoon came and went. It veered off sharply as it approached Shanghai. And is now out swirling around over by Japan. Yay. (I mean, not “yay” for people in Japan, but “yay” for me and my family). 

Now… there WILL BE a LIVE STREAM this week. 

twitch.tv/americanmcgee is the place to be 

(it will also simulcast on YouTube but you can’t win prizes there, so, … why?)

Plenty to review and discuss. 

Check out these Jabberwock fight scene close-ups from Adam… 

And let us know in the comments below… which version you prefer – A, B, C, D. 

And we’ll see you on the live stream later this week!

From Shanghai with Rawr!

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Adam sent over the final version of Alice’s boss battle fight with the Jabberwock. Turned out AMAZING. Of course it did. I like all the little details contained in this image. The platform is suspended by the chain/tongues of Alice’s Wonderland co-inhabitants. The confrontation taking place surrounded by clocks (time). And the looming Chaos taking over the world in the background. There’s so much THEME contained in this image – so much that links back to the journey Young Alice has endured and the overarching narrative of the series. Anyway… I love this image! 

You know what I don’t love? 

There’s another huge typhoon heading towards Shanghai. And if you look at the storm track you’ll see it basically lands in my back yard. Again. So… 

Last time this happened it was a bit scary. The water level in the flood control channel behind our house got pretty high… but the local authorities kept everything under control. Hoping the same will be true this time. Fingers crossed. 

Now… we’re supposed to have a Live Stream this week but I want to wait until after this storm has passed to decide whether or not that’s going to happen. Expect an update in 48~72 hours on that topic. 

If things don’t go well I might end up underwater. And Joey provided a concept sketch of what I’ll look like if that happens.

Actually, these are sketches of London Citizens from the Underwater London section of Asylum. 

Maybe that one is more like me? 

I think there are some dudes in Japan who are turned on by this. 

We’ll have a look at all of this – AND MORE – if there is a live stream this week. Woo. 

Meanwhile, Jen and Yan continue their awesome work on more Plushie Dreadfuls. We’ve been putting some new designs through Crowd Design over on my Instagram and the Mysterious Facebook Page. (I try not tot post too much of this stuff on Patreon because people get confused/upset – “That’s not Alice!”). 

This is version 2 of a design related to PTSD… a topic at the center of the Alice: Asylum narrative. So let us know in the comments here – or over on the Facebook/Insta posts what you think of this (and the other recent Plushie Dreadful designs). 

Finally… 

How many of you have seen the trailer for the new Matrix movie? 

You can check out The Matrix Resurrections over on YouTube via THIS LINK. 

I posted a screen-grab above from the opening frames of that trailer. Do you see what I see? Blue butterfly. Phrenology. Black cat on a desk… remind you of anything? Yeah… kinda crazy.

Feels like someone has been playing the Alice games. And of course, the entire trailer is one giant Alice in Wonderland homage. 

What did you think? See any other interesting parallels to our Alice? Let us know in the comments below. We’ll watch the trailer and discuss some of this stuff on the next stream (assuming I’m not underwater). 

From Shanghai with an Umbrella, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Did you know “Alice: Madness Returns” is in the Top 10 over on Xbox Game Pass?!

Totally insane! I just tweeted that EA might actually notice… if everyone jumps in and pushes it into the #1 slot. So… got Game Pass? Jump in and give it a shove! 

Narrative Outline News

A huge THANK YOU, to everyone who read and provided feedback on the Narrative Outline. We’ve collected tons of feedback and are really happy with the results of this process. A couple of points to take away: 

1) Your feedback is GREAT. Lots of good points were made. Much of it aligned with things we already planned on addressing or improving. Quite a few suggestions related to things like foreshadowing and plot development made a lot of sense. And we will be incorporating a lot of your feedback and ideas into the next revision. 

2) The Narrative Outline is now in the hands of R.J. Berg, my writing partner on the first two games. He’s tasked primarily with “script doctoring” and dialog. And he told me this morning he expects to have his first round of notes/suggestions done in ~2 weeks. 

3) The Art Team will begin working on tasks related to items contained in the Outline that we feel comfortable will be in the Design Bible. 

Art Team Tasks

Alex has put together a massive list of art tasks related to the Outline. That document is attached to this post. BUT BEWARE – THERE ARE SPOILERS CONTAINED WITHIN!!! Do not open or read that document if you don’t want to encounter spoilers. 

Without ruining anything, I can tell you: That document is 23 pages long and contains 140+ individual requests for artwork. These are necessary to illustrate the Design Bible. And we expect that the work will take 3~6 months to complete. 

While that work is underway, we will continue to refine and work towards completing the Narrative Outline. With the Narrative Outline complete, work can resume on the Design Bible itself. Woo!

TLDR; Expect to see a ton of new art flowing through the pipeline soon. 

Like the awesome image (top) from Adam depicting the boss battle between Alice and the Jabberwock. 

From Shanghai with Top 10, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

We will host a LIVE STREAM today at 7PM PDT on my Twitch Channel. That’s less than two hours from when I am writing this post… 

We’ll discuss the image above from Joey. This depicts the inhabitants of London overcome by Chaos Tentacles. These characters appear during a sequence where Young Alice is exploring the journey taken by her older self. And of these characters, Joey says: 

London Characters

I think there are 3 stages of these citizens,

Stage 1:Normal people

Stage 2: People affected by Chaos

Stage 3: People completely eaten/taken down by Chaos(quite crazy mode)

I listed different types of people, I did the design of one figure(man) with 3 stages, just to show how much changes on the same person, I’m also thinking maybe for stage 3, people are totall eaten by chaos, tentacles from the head to the feet, we can see only the legs of a person(maybe I will try that on another figure)

For the other people, I only did them on stage 2, ?this is also how most of the people Alice runs into in the city.

To which Alex replies: 

I think this is fine as a starting point. But I think we need to push this further.

?Regardless of how we all feel, I think this is a great concept to bounce past the patrons.
?The question; Are the designs “horror and chaotic” enough?

My thoughts;
?By only using “tentacles”, this doesn’t speak “consumed by chaos” to me.
?It speaks Davy Jones.

I think the final chaos-formed baddies need a higher level of body horror and warped proportions to be truly terrifying and chaotic.

?See quick example below;

To which I would say… that screams John Carpenter’s “The Thing” to me… but I still love all these ideas!

So join us on the Live Stream in a little while and let’s all talk about it! 

We’ll have PRIZES, tentacles, concept art, narrative overview (light discussion), Plushie Dreadfuls, and more! Woo!

From Shanghai with Consumption, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Font Lord here again with an update about the next live-stream… again!

So it seems we have now settled on Monday August 30th 10am HK Time.
That’s Sunday August 29th at 7PM PST.

https://www.twitch.tv/americanmcgee

Sorry for all the altering of that date, there’s lot going on with office visitors and vaccination dates etc…

As usual, there will be fun and games and shennanigans and PRIZES!
But also as you might imagine from the top picture, we’re going to give playing Quake a shot if we can grab it from Steam and get it all working right, and I’m sure American will have some fun ‘working at ID’ stories up his sleeve.
Fingers crossed.

But failing that, there’s always playing Madness Returns as we attempt to break the record for the longest time it takes to complete that while streaming.

We will also BRIEFLY talk about the recent Alice: Asylum Narrative Outline PDF we published here. So be prepared for some spoilers.
However the main discussion about that topic will be in the live-stream mid-September when we have collated and digested all the feedback you have been sending in.

So, I hope to see you then.

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

Font Lord here continuing our pledge to remind you of what print is next with plenty of warning.

As you can see above, the next print (August Patrons charged in September) will be The Universal Trinity.
A rather popular print I think you’ll agree.

So make sure you’re at $75 BEFORE September hits if you want this gem of a print.
(and yes, once September rolls around, it’ll be a choice for you 3x$35 people too)

Speaking of the $75 tier, I think we may have some newer Patrons joined after the Alice: Asylum Narrative Outline was released, so for those people, just a reminder about how awesome that tier is.
If it’s your FIRST EVER time at $75, you will get…

1) The Print of the Month
2) The Hysteria Rabbit + Tote Bag set
3) And of course Discord access and you’ll be seeing Patreon Posts 3 days before the rest of the world.  Yay!

A final note/reminder is that as opposed to what American wrote earlier, next week’s live-stream is very likely to be TUESDAY !!
So bear that in mind and be sure not to miss us    🙂

– Cheers