American McGee's Alice is a 2000 third-person dark fantasy action-adventure video game developed by Rogue Entertainment under the direction of designer American McGee and published by Electronic Arts under the EA Games banner. The game was originally released for Windows and Mac OS. Although a planned PlayStation 2 port was cancelled, the game was later released digitally for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 via downloadable content for its sequel.
The game's premise is based on the Lewis Carroll novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) but presents a gloomy, cruel and violent version of the setting. The game centers on the novels' protagonist Alice, whose family is killed in a house fire years before the story of the game takes place. After several years of treatment in a psychiatric clinic, the emotionally traumatized Alice makes a mental retreat to Wonderland, which has been disfigured by her injured psyche.
American McGee's Alice uses the id Tech 3 game engine, which was previously used in Quake III Arena and redesigned for this game by Ritual Entertainment. The game was met with positive critical reception, with reviewers commending the high artistic and technical quality of the level design while criticizing the excessive linearity of the gameplay. As of September 2017, American McGee's Alice has sold over 1.5 million copies. A sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, was released in 2011.
Gameplay American McGee's Alice is a third-person action game in which the player controls the titular character Alice along a linear route. Alice can communicate with non-player characters, fight off enemies and bosses, and solve puzzles. Along with the basic actions of walking and jogging, Alice can jump, cling to ledges, climb and swing on ropes, swim in water, and glide over columns of steam by using her inflated dress as a makeshift parachute. The game can be played at four difficulty levels: "Easy", Medium", "Hard" and "Nightmare". The game's levels feature many platforms and other obstacles as well as puzzles that require solving for further passage through the game.
Throughout the game, Alice can obtain up to ten different weapons, known as "toys", for use against enemies. Most toys have two modes of use, which differ in the method and strength of the attack. The first toy acquired by Alice is the Vorpal Blade, which, along with the Croquet Mallet, can be used for basic melee attacks. Toys with longer range include the Ice Wand and an explosive jack-in-the-box. One particular toy, the Jabberwock's Eye Staff, is essential to the narrative and is assembled from pieces scattered throughout the setting. The game's combat system implements automatic target designation: if an enemy character is nearby, the player's weapon sight is automatically fixed upon that enemy. Outside of combat, the sight plays the role of a jump indicator by taking on the shape of two footprints that appear on the surface of any place that Alice would land if she made a jump.
Because the game takes place within Alice's imagination, the health mechanic is represented as "sanity", which is displayed as a red bar on the left-hand side of the screen. The sanity meter decreases when Alice sustains damage from enemy attacks or an environmental hazard. When the sanity meter is depleted, the game prematurely ends, after which it can be continued from where the game was last saved. A magic mechanic is represented as "willpower", and it is displayed as a blue bar on the right-hand side of the screen. Willpower is consumed when almost any toy is used, and a toy will not serve its function when Alice's willpower is too low. Certain amounts of sanity or willpower can be restored by collecting crystals of "meta-essence", the life force of Wonderland. Crystals of "meta-substance", representing the power of imagination, restore sanity and willpower simultaneously. All crystal types can be found scattered across levels and some respawn within certain places. Meta-substance can be obtained after defeating an enemy; the volume of the meta-substance is dependent on the strength of the defeated enemy.
Certain uncommon items can be found throughout the game that enhance Alice's abilities: "Ragebox Elixir" increases the damage dealt by Alice with the Vorpal Blade, the "Darkened Looking Glass" makes Alice invisible to enemies, and "Grasshopper Tea" augments Alice's speed and jumping height. These items change Alice's appearance and their effects are limited to a short period of time, after which Alice returns to her original state.
Plot
In 1863, Alice Liddell is awoken from a dream of Wonderland by a house fire. Although she is able to save herself, her parents are killed and she is left with serious burns and psychological damage. Alice is brought to Rutledge Asylum in a state of catatonia, where several years of treatment fail to rouse her from her stupor. When Alice's toy rabbit seems to call to her for help, she mentally retreats to Wonderland, which appears to have been disfigured by her broken mind. Alice meets the Cheshire Cat, who invites her to follow the White Rabbit. She learns from nearby village inhabitants that the Queen of Hearts has put Wonderland in decline and despondency, and that the White Rabbit has promised a champion in Alice. Alice is directed to an old gnome who can aid her pursuit of the White Rabbit by reducing her size. The gnome and Alice infiltrate the Fortress of Doors and enter the school inside, where they create an elixir that shrinks Alice and allows her passage to the Vale of Tears.
After aiding the Mock Turtle in retrieving his stolen shell from the Duchess, Alice catches up to the White Rabbit, who takes her in the direction of the Caterpillar before he is crushed by the normal-sized Hatter's foot. Alice meets with the Caterpillar, who explains to her that Wonderland's current form is the result of Alice's survivor guilt and advises her to slay the Queen of Hearts to restore Wonderland's integrity. Alice returns to normal size after nibbling from a mushroom guarded by the Voracious Centipede. In the center of a plateau, Alice discovers a piece of the Jabberwock's Eye Staff. The voice of an unseen oracle tells Alice that before the Queen of Hearts can be slain, Alice must first eliminate the Queen's sentinel – the Jabberwock, who she must kill to obtain the final piece of the Eye Staff. In her search for the remaining pieces of the Eye Staff, Alice defeats the Red King in the chess-themed Looking-Glass Land, as well as the Hatter's minions Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Alice later finds that the Hatter is conducting cruel experiments on the March Hare and Dormouse, and he is keeping the Gryphon captive. After killing the Hatter, Alice frees the Gryphon, who offers to rally forces against the Queen of Hearts and takes Alice to the Land of Fire and Brimstone, the abode of the Jabberwock. Within the remains of Alice's old home, the Jabberwock wracks Alice with guilt over her parents' deaths and overpowers her in a fight until the Gryphon returns and rescues Alice by depriving the Jabberwock of one of his eyes.
With the Jabberwock's Eye Staff fully assembled, the Gryphon directs Alice to Queensland and takes off with the intention of stopping the Jabberwock himself. On her way to the Queen of Hearts's castle, Alice sees the Gryphon and the Jabberwock engaged in an aerial battle, which ends with the Gryphon mortally wounded. Following Alice's victory against the Jabberwock, the dying Gryphon entrusts Alice with the final battle against the Queen of Hearts. At the entrance to the Queen's Hall, the Cheshire Cat attempts to confess to Alice about the nature of the Queen of Hearts, but he is suddenly executed as he states that "You are two parts of the same..." Alice engages in a fight with a figure puppeteered by the real Queen of Hearts, a giant fleshy tentacled creature who warns Alice that destroying her will destroy them both. Upon Alice's final victory over the Queen of Hearts, Wonderland is restored, and many of the characters who had died in the journey are revived. Her mind repaired, Alice leaves Rutledge Asylum.
Development Conception Creative director American McGee had been working as a level designer at id Software on the Doom and Quake series. During the development of Quake II, the team watched a demonstration of an early version of Valve's GoldSrc engine, a heavily modified, licensed version of id's Quake engine. The demo showed the capability of manipulating the camera to capture cinematic-like cutscenes and provide narrative. Though McGee was impressed with this novel use and wanted to use their technology to tell stories, he said that others at id did not want to go in that direction.
After leaving id Software in 1997, McGee was inspired to design a game that did not involve space marines, guns, aliens and outer space, which were the common themes in the Doom and Quake series.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: McGee's dark and lustrous image of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was primarily inspired by the Crystal Method track "Trip Like I Do", in which he heard the word "wonder". Following this inspiration, McGee and his creative partner R.J. Berg began sketching a narrative and preliminary designs. McGee's goal was to present what he considered to be a natural extension of the setting and characters of the original Alice novels. Many of the early experiments with evolving the material of the novel – which included manga, futuristic, cartoon and sexual interpretations – strayed from McGee's intended direction. Sketches of Alice, the Cheshire Cat and the Hatter by Terry Smith and Norm Felchle played a decisive role in establishing the game's visual style and served as a foundation for subsequent concept art. McGee sought to omit shortcomings in products that he had previously designed, such as recreating reality instead of creating a fantastic world, reusing traditional weapons, and unremarkable characters. The game had a budget of $4.5 million. Around twenty-seven people worked on it.
While working on the game's plot, McGee considered several approaches to Alice's return to Wonderland, one of which involved a modern-day Alice murdering her abusive stepfather in reality while journeying through Wonderland, which was rejected by EA. Another approach involved the projection of Alice's parents and acquaintances onto the characters of Wonderland and Alice investigating the cause of her father's death. After discarding this concept as too complicated, McGee ultimately aimed for "the simplest story that told the most". Aside from the reappearance of characters and locations mentioned in the novels, no references to the novels' plots are made in the game, as McGee did not intend for the game to be a continuation or competing version of Carroll's work. The development team solely used the original novels as reference material, ignoring film adaptations and other derivative works.
The game's title, which includes McGee's name, was chosen at EA's insistence, primarily for the ease of registering and protecting a new trademark. McGee admitted that he did not support the title, as he opined that it put the rest of the development team in the background. American McGee's Alice is McGee's debut work as a lead game designer.
Development and marketing