Dear Insane Children, 

These days it feels like we’re living in an upside-down Escher painting. A barrel of oil “costs” -$35USD, toilet paper is the new gold, and a microscopic particle has brought entire nations to a grinding halt. Can we just call for an early New Year and be done with 2020 already?!

Here in Shanghai, I’ve managed to work my way through a large chunk of the Art Prints we need to send out for April. There are only 135 left in the system which need to be picked, packed, labeled, and sent for international delivery. Adding to the “fun” of this process is mayhem in the logistics industry – shipping lines we’ve relied on to deliver packages around the world quickly and cheaply have been shut down one by one. We’re now left with “slow boat” shipping or FedEx/DHL (super expensive)… so all your art prints are now literally taking the Slow Boat From China. But they will eventually get to you… with delivery times now being around 30+ days instead of the 15+ we’d got used to in the past. 

To commemorate the upside-downness of it all… Omri’s working on a new Art Print tentatively called “Escher Alice” or “Blade Face 15” … I have no idea! It’ll get a new name once it’s finished. Though I don’t think there will ever be another name as fantastic as “Blade Face.” 

Broken Things

And speaking of all sorts of things being broken… Jen is working on a collection of breakable objects…

Expect to see objects like this strewn around Alice’s imagination just waiting to be whacked with a Croquet Mallet or shattered with a blast from the Pepper Grinder. I’ve always found breakables to be a very important part of the rhythm one gets into while exploring a game world. They are like the hi-hat used to keep the beat during the quiet section of a bit of (snake) jazz. A bite of snake jazz? Anyway… 

Live Stream on Twitch

Would you look at that? Twitch offers a way to schedule a future live stream that actually, you know, works?!

So we’ll have another live stream on Twitch this week. The usual time… 10AM Thursday morning (Hong Kong Time). Which is Wednesday at 7PM if you happen to be on the West Coast of the US. 

My Twitch channel can be found here:  https://www.twitch.tv/americanmcgee 

And we’ll record the post this stream over on my YouTube Channel if you want to watch afterward. 

This week we’ll continue playing through Alice: Madness Returns while discussing ideas for the design and narrative of Alice: Asylum. Hope to see you there!

A Word From Our Sponsors

Our longtime and very generous supporters over at Freaky Fandoms (Andrew and Deborah) are involved with a documentary film called “In Search of Tomorrow” which explores one of my favorite movie genres: 80’s Sci-Fi

They are currently hosting a Kickstarter campaign (it’s already surpassed its goal in a huge way!) and offering a ton of great merch, community hooks, and project involvement (credit, etc). Please check out what they are putting together via this link: 

In Search of Tomorrow on Kickstarter 

If you’ve been around our Patreon since the start, you know we never do cross-promotion like this… but this is a project I find quite compelling and I think you will too! 

Housekeeping Notes from Font Lord

Font Lord says all the Backerkit surveys for the enamel pins have been sent out. And that there are a few of you who have yet to respond. If you don’t respond and provide your shipping details then we can’t ship out your pins! 

A final reminder email will go out in the next couple of days. If you’ve not yet filled out your survey then keep an eye out of for that. And perhaps do a search of ALL your Email Folders for “backerkit” to make sure it’s not gone in the Spam Folder or something. Mmmmm. Spam. 

From Beautiful Spring in Shanghai, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

A sneak peek at what’s going on behind the scenes with tasks related to getting the Design Bible off the ground.  My notes for continued progression through the early narrative of the game.

Denial to The Queen (4/21/2020)

Still working on the exact sequence of transitions from Alice in her Circus Cage to An Audience With The Queen to Hatter’s Domain but here are a couple of bits and pieces. 

The Circus Realm is – subconsciously – a function of Denial. How does one get past denial (as a stage of grief)? We’ll come back to that later. 

The Circus Realm is – to the eye – a place to keep Alice endlessly entertained. It would have started off as a wonderful place for a little girl to spend her day. Full of curiosities, delights, thrills, and mysteries. As Alice moves through it, these aspects should still be on full display. Fire breathers, bearded women, unlikely animals, flying trapezes, and a sense of constant surprise. It’s also important that The Show Must Go On (CONSTANTLY) – everyone’s in a hurry, everyone’s late, no one has time to stop, sit, and think. “Must remember my lines, must perfect my flying somersault, must not be boring.” There are Ringmasters who crack the whip and keep everyone in constant motion (Tweedle Dee and Dum).

The Circus Realm is – in reality – a prison. A place of frantic order, scripted reality, and the invisible cage of never having enough time to do anything but practice and perform. Its design is the handiwork of The Queen of Hearts, the current ruler of Wonderland. She who sits on the throne in the Realm of Hearts; the place in which The Circus occupies a distant (preferably forgotten) little corner. This prison needs no bars because no one ever has time to escape. 

The Circus Realm has become – in recent days – a bore. Alice has attempted to escape a thousand times. Being a precocious and curious child, she’s always in search of something more. She craves deep mystery, proper puzzles, and an unscripted adventure. Problem is, The Moon. He floats above Wonderland day and night (mostly at night?) watching and waiting for Alice to run. And when she does he’s there on her heels singing a gentle lullaby. Before she knows it, Alice is fast asleep. And when she awakes, she’s back in The Circus Realm. And, like a dream, her memory of running away and all the days before is foggy and unclear. So she writes herself notes to remind herself of what’s come before. And from those notes, she knows she’s been trapped in this place for a very long time. And that her only hope of escape is a confrontation with The Queen. 

During her last attempt at escape, she came back with a souvenir – a Crystal Vorpal Blade – the meaning of which is not yet clear. A mystery. Good!

—

Running Away From The Circus

Leaving the “cage” she shares with the Mock Turtle (it’s not a cage… it’s a tent, a dressing room, a dollhouse – something a little girl would like to live in) Alice is push-pulled into a typical Circus Day. 

We can use this opportunity to continue the sequence of tutorial steps we began to introduce during the intro. The circus provides an excellent place for advanced mechanics – trapeze stunts, lion taming, knife throwing, shrinking and growing, etc… 

An opportunity presents itself – an opening in the circus tent, leading to a tethered hot air balloon – and Alice once again escapes! But this time is different because she’s got the Vorpal Blade and she means business. 

First step: Disable The Moon. The hot air balloon will get her where she needs to go. And the moon turns out to be a clockwork automaton filled with gears, levers, and steam pipes – a Hatter Industries invention apparently. Alice fights her way through The Moon and hijacks it for a ride towards the Queen’s Castle. 

A rough crash landing just short of the castle. A sneak battle through the Queens’ hedge mazes. 

The Knave is encountered somewhere in here. An Insane Child – modeled on a child Alice knew from The Asylum – who pledges to help Alice get to The Queen. Claims he’s tired of “all this order and perfection” – and will risk the Queen’s wrath to help Alice. 

Battle through the lower levels of the castle. Do we see The Sun held prisoner – used as an energy source – in the bowels of the castle? We need to think about the concept artwork done for “Judgement” and how that plus the resulting punishment (deadly croquet) fit into all of this (or does that all come later – the next time Alice “visits” the Queen’s Domain)? 

An Audience With The Queen

The Knave and Alice are captured. Alice confronts The Queen. “Why am I your prisoner?” The Queen explains that she’s only trying to protect Alice. There’s a force – A Chaos – threatening to destroy Wonderland. And the only thing keeping it at bay is The Queen and her insistence on Order. There are dangers lurking in the wilds of Wonderland – no place for a girl to go poking around. 

“Why can’t I wake up?” Reveal: A giant bloody drill bit spinning slowly has pierced the wall of the castle. The Queen explains that Alice, the little girl who would like to wake up, is no more. She was done in by the Asylum (a lobotomy). And that this corner of Wonderland is all that remains. Beyond this is oblivion. The Knave gravely confirms this fact (he’s in the dog house so he must be telling the truth). 

Hatter was assigned a task: Perform alchemy on Chaos – turn Chaos into Order. But the Queen’s heard no reports of any progress for weeks now. Alice must venture to Hatter’s Domain – she’s looking for an adventure, isn’t she? – and find out what’s happened. The Queen asks Alice to carry a gift to Hatter. “Be sure not to open it. Curiosity killed the cat, you know?” 

—

Note: How does one get past Denial? The next stage (Queen Domain) represents Anger. You get past Denial by a descent into Anger. Rage must propel Alice out of The Circus and into the next stage. How should we represent rage? Now that she’s got a Vorpal Blade the most obvious way would be for her to pull it out – a shock to those who would keep her captive – and use it in bloody fashion. Slice her way through whatever too stupid or too slow to get out of her way. A murder spree. Does that work? 

Note 2: Queen holds Alice’s Rabbit hostage. Why? Alice doesn’t want to follow orders? She immediately rejects The Queen’s version of reality (denial again – fractal) and becomes angry (again fractal) so the Rabbit is taken prisoner. The Queen is convinced that The Hatter will set Alice straight. He knows The Truth. 

—

More notes as they are created… feel free to share your feedback in the comments below.

From The Circus, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Let’s start today’s post with A GIFT.

These days, lots of us are using technology like Zoom to connect with work, school, friends and family. And I noticed a number of artists sharing backgrounds for use with video conferencing programs. So I thought, “Hey! We could make and share some too!” 

Behold!  Inspired by the world of “Alice,” a collection of background images crafted by Omri. 

 Yay! 

Eyebrows and Eyelashes

The team is busy at work defining some of the key aspects of Alice’s design for Asylum. We have explored this topic in the past but never with the goal of settling on a final model for our main character. Here’s some of the work Omri’s done lately…

We talked in detail about the topic of defining Alice’s shape, ratios, face, and other design elements during last week’s Live Stream on Twitch. 

If you missed it live on Twitch then you can watch the backup on YouTube via THIS LINK.

The part where we discuss defining Alice’s features starts around 55 minutes. 

Feel free to provide feedback on what’s presented here in the comments below. But keep in mind that this is Not Final – and that Joey will start work on her presentation for this in the coming days. 

It’s Always Monday

Alex has been working to transition our team management tool over to a site called Monday.

This offers a much clearer structure for task assignment and tracking vs. what we were using previously (Trello). You can see here the tasks assigned to me (American!) for writing. 

I expect we’ll start to see lots of good progress being made once the team is fully transitioned to this new system.

This Week

It’s an Off Week for Live Streaming… so don’t expect a scheduled event. Though I might jump on Twitch to stream some of the new DOOM: Eternal. Been hearing great things about that game. And I need to continue building up my Twitch presence so we can unlock various features. 

If you want to receive notification for when I go live on Twitch, then subscribe (or follow?) to me via THIS LINK. 

From Shanghai with Eyebrows,

-American

Dear Insane Children

Here’s this month’s “Lucky 5” give-away.
I bet you thought we’d forgotten?

Well, actually, the delay was because we needed to expand the scope slightly and open this up to the ‘fanbase as a whole’ to stay in line with Patreon’s guidelines on giveaways.

So, now you can also enter our monthly prize giving goodness by commenting on future YouTube uploads when we say it’s a give-away month in the video.

So…. down to business for April, who are the lucky 5 who will be winning a PIRATE JAM DOUBLOON?

• Ben Evans
• Anthony Adkins
• Conner Ellis
• Ashley Kivari
• Sungwon Han

Great big congratulations to our winners, and you will all be getting your doubloon in the mail in the not too distant future.
Expect a little bit of a COVID19 based delay tho.

In other news, you might also have noticed the pic at the top of this post.
This is our Print Calendar for the year.
Showing you what prints are for what months for those of you at the $75 tier or the 3x$35 tier.

Lots of great stuff coming up and also a few mystery squares for future prints.
Next up for April Patrons (charged in May) is the amazing ‘Falling Apart’.

And to round things off, of course there’s a picture of Lulu

Ok, let’s all stay safe out there !

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

We’re making good progress on the planning and definitions required for building the Alice: Asylum Design Bible. To help put in order all of the required details, Alex sent me a series of questions related to Alice and her story. Here’s a sample: 

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY (When the player meets Alice – POINT A):

How does she feel?

She feels abandoned, alone, forgotten and that something is missing. Having suffered a massive trauma – though it’s now largely forgotten – she is unable to form close relationships or to care much about anything. She feels distant, closed off, numb, and distracted. 

She also feels life is scripted (hence the Circus, the monotony of denial). Certainty has become her prison. Nothing new ever happens. Nothing ever deviates from the script. 

What is she seeking / what is her motivation?

She’ll start by wanting to bring order back to her existence in Denial. But will end by embracing the chaos represented by reintegration with her adult self. Her goal will be to “put things right” or put things “back in order” but the object on which she’s enacting this goal will shift as she realizes that it’s not just Denial (The Circus) that needs fixing, but Wonderland, and then herself.

What are her fears?
The irrational, sudden, unexplained and unnecessary introduction of confusion and chaos. Change. Being abandoned. Being alone. Being unwanted. Being forgotten. 

What gives her strength?

She starts by believing it’s her logic and knowledge and her ability to keep everything in order and well organized. 

What are her ideals / What does she value?

Logic, order, organization, intelligence, curiosity. 

What does she love?

When we first meet her – nothing, really. Love means embracing uncertainty and accepting that the thing you love will eventually die or be taken away. As such, Alice prefers to remain distant, cold, unloving… indifferent. “The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.” 

What does she hate?
Disorder, confusion, lack of clarity, illogical persons/things. 

What annoys Alice?
Mess, disorganization, waste, inefficiency, repetitive noises, unsolved puzzles, things not being “in their place.” She’s got OCD. 

What makes her happy?
Putting things in order, solving puzzles, cleaning up messes. 

What does she know?
She thinks she knows everything there is to know. 

What does she need to learn?

That she knows nothing because nothing is as it seems. That change is constant. That it is better to be prepared for encounters with chaos than to pretend that any sort of action can avoid those encounters entirely. That chaos is the catalyst of health, change, growth, and life. 

And as we progress through these definitions we’re also working to lock down basics such as Alice’s size, shape, and appearance. We need an exemplar of Young Alice. 

Why do you suppose we struggle so much to establish and then stick with a standard model of Young Alice as we hope to see her in Asylum? Is it because we’ve just not seen her yet? Or because each of our artists – and our Insane Children – all carry personal conceptions of an Ideal Alice? 

I can almost imagine a Character Creation Tool in Asylum that allows subtle adjustments resulting in a near-infinite range of Alice’s… just to satisfy everyone’s different notion of who this girl really is! (No, we won’t actually be doing that… I said “imagine”). 

As if on cue to make my point… I noticed this image from Dario (from a series he’s creating that deal with non-euclidian geometry) in which he presents us with yet another interpretation of our main character. This time in the form of a silhouette – one we can tell, even from a distance is Alice… perhaps because she carries a hint of the Dis…on’t Say It(!) Alice?

It’s an interesting topic, to say the least! 

And since we’re on the topic… let’s discuss it in detail with the next… 

LIVE STREAM! 

We’ll be over on Twitch again. Hit THIS LINK to subscribe to my Twitch Channel.

We’re aiming to go live at 7PM PDT on April 15th. Hope to see you there! 

And, yes, this live stream will be backed up to my YouTube Channel once it’s done. 

There will be prizes! And Martin (back in the studio)! And Lulu? 

Questions and Feedback, Please

Share with us your questions and feedback in the comments below. We’ll read those things out loud and answer them during the live stream. Yay! 

Alright… I have a massive task in front of me again… 

From Shanghai with 500 Posters to Sign, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

In case you missed our debut on Twitch, I’ve uploaded a recording of the stream to YouTube. You can watch it on YouTube via THIS LINK.

A big THANK YOU to all of our Insane Children who did find their way over to Twitch. We had a lot of fun and it was fantastic to have you all there! 

If you were with us during the stream and have comments or suggestions for how we might improve the next stream, let me know in the comments below!

As I mentioned on the stream… I think it might make sense for me to build up my Twitch profile towards Affiliate by streaming another playthrough of AMA and AMR. 

On that note… Omri says he’s working with a modder friend to bring out a visually updated (hi-res texture pack) version of AMA. And that I shouldn’t stream AMA until that’s ready – in a few weeks. 

So maybe we’ll start with AMR and then try out Omri’s hi-res AMA? 

If you want to follow on Twitch you can do that via THIS LINK.

From Shanghai with Twitchy Love, 

-American