Alice: Madness Returns

Alice as seen in Madness Returns, wielding the Vorpal Blade

Alice: Madness Returns is played from a third-person perspective. The player controls Alice for the entirety of the game for running, jumping, dodging, attacking, and shrinking.

In combat, Alice gains a small number of weapons that can be utilized in several ways. Her primary weapon is the Vorpal Blade, a decorated kitchen knife. The remainder of her arsenal is somewhat akin to the benign and mundane items that take on a deadly quality in Alice's tainted Wonderland in the first game. The Pepper Grinder becomes a crank operated Gatling gun, used to attack at a distance and pepper pig snouts. The Hobby Horse is used as a sledgehammer to inflict heavy damage and break barriers and defenses. The Teapot Cannon fires tea sieves that explode to cause heavy damage and, like the Hobby Horse, break barriers. By collecting teeth that are dropped by foes or found scattered about the levels, the player can upgrade these items to more powerful versions. Two other weapons cannot be upgraded, primarily because they are more defensive than directly offensive: the Umbrella acts as a shield that can be used to deflect and reflect most incoming projectiles; The Clockwork Bomb is a time-delayed/remote-controlled rabbit alarm clock that does a minimal amount of damage to enemies, but its usefulness is better illustrated as a decoy, as well as a weight to keep switches temporarily depressed.

Alice's health is tracked by a number of rose petals. Should Alice's health fall to zero during gameplay, the player is forced to start at the most recent checkpoint. They can also regenerate health by going into giant purple flowers. Falling off platforms into bottomless pits or dangerous liquids do not damage Alice but restart her at a nearby platform. The game also introduces Hysteria, which can be used when Alice's health is very low, and it can only be used for a limited amount of time.

While working on each level, the player can discover various secrets. A primary mechanic is to use Alice's shrinking potion to reduce in size, allowing her to walk through small spaces like keyholes, but also reveals invisible platforms and surfaces; after returning to normal size, these platforms slowly fade back to invisibility, requiring the player to remember their location. Pig's snouts, which make noise when the player is close, can be struck with the pepper grinder to reveal new paths. Radula rooms provide a short challenge to the player, which on completion grants a jar of paint; obtaining four jars earns the player another rose for Alice's health. Memories can be picked up that provide voiceovers revealing parts of the game's backstory.

Upon completion, the player can start a new game plus, letting them play through the game again but keeping all their weapons and upgrades from the previous attempt. From the menu, the player can also review the memories that they have found within the game.

Rumors of a sequel to Alice first developed shortly after the original game was released to critical and commercial success, though at that time, the development team behind the original were working on the ultimately-canceled spin-off, American McGee's Oz. As the development of the movie adaptation of American McGee's Alice took longer and the original game became more of a cult classic, in 2007 interest at Electronic Arts rose in a remake of the game and work was started on a sequel.[7] However, when the movie adaptation fell through, plans for a sequel were shelved, and remained so for nearly a decade. At the February 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, EA announced a sequel, which at the time had the working title The Return of American McGee's Alice.[8][9] Two pieces of concept art accompanied the announcement, along with the information that the original game's writer and executive producer would also return for the sequel.[10] In November of that year, a fan-made trailer (with the title "The Return of Alice") was mistaken by gaming news outlets as an official teaser for the game, in which Alice is in therapy after a relapse nine months following the events of the first game, and appears to hallucinate an image of the Cheshire Cat in place of her doctor.[11]

At EA's Studio Showcase in July 2010, more details about the game were shown, including its current title, Alice: Madness Returns. In addition to further pieces of concept art and actual, in-game screenshots, the first official teaser was released. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fan video eight months prior, it also portrays Alice in therapy: after being hypnotized by her doctor in a bizarre office filled with prosthetic arms hanging from the ceiling, as she opens her mouth to speak, large amounts of blood and teeth pour out. As the game title appears, a whispering voice is heard saying, "What have you done?"[4] During the 2010 Tokyo Game Show, new assets, including a second trailer, were released. Alice is seen strolling through a London street, and eventually approaches an area littered with toys and a toy store window, which contains a set depicting the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse and the March Hare taking tea. Suddenly, she sees an image of her deceased parents in the window's reflection but turns around to find no one there. The window begins to burn and the silhouette of the Queen of Hearts appears before it explodes in flames, and the Queen's tentacles drag Alice into the inferno. Like the previous trailer, it ends with a voice saying "What have you done?"[12]

On February 14, 2011, MSNBC's "In-Game" website unveiled the third teaser trailer as well as a brief interview with American McGee regarding the game.[13] The third teaser depicts Alice wandering around an initially beautiful Wonderland, eventually coming across the Caterpillar, who transforms into a giant, menacing butterfly as the landscape is attacked by fiery phoenixes and turned into a nightmarish world reminiscent of the original game's landscapes. Alice finds herself sitting at a tea party with the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Dormouse. The Hatter sends a robotic teapot to kill Alice, who in turns stabs it to death in the eye with the Vorpal Blade. Then, a voice asks "What have you done?" A fourth trailer, showing gameplay footage for the first time was released on March 4, 2011.[14] The trailer featured possible gameplay in Victorian London, new costumes and weapons for Alice, the reprised roles of some of the voice cast from the first game, and the appearance of old and new characters including a resurrected Jabberwock and the Dodo; after the trailer the Cheshire Cat says "Now it's time to put your blade to work". The player can also hear Alice's Vorpal Blade being equipped as the title card comes up.

GameSpot released footage of a gameplay demo whilst interviewing an EA executive producer Joel Wade in April.[15] In the video, numerous details about the game were revealed. Wade explained storywise after Alice left Rutledge Asylum, she is an orphan and now lives in an orphanage, and the home's director is helping her. Gameplay showed Alice can unlock and use several weapons, which can be upgraded by collecting teeth throughout the game. Weapons including the Vorpal Blade, the Pepper Grinder which acts as a projectile machine gun-like weapon, the Clockwork Bomb, the club-like Hobby Horse, and the explosive Teapot Cannon. Alice also collects "memories" that are part of her quest to recall forgotten memories from her past. Enemies are described as having "puzzle elements", namely their weak point which the player must figure out to defeat them. On May 20, 2011, a prequel to Madness Returns, titled Alice: Madness Returns Interactive Story, was released as an app exclusively for iOS. A port for Android phones was developed. The app plays like a book that requires you to interact with illustrations and at many times allows you to play mini-games. The story covers the events even before the original game all the way to the events directly before Alice: Madness Returns. On June 3, 2011, a final launch trailer was released. This showed some bosses, Alice fighting enemies, the Cheshire Cat giving Alice hints, and more. At the time of release, Madness Returns had a final development budget of $9 million.[16] In 2013, American McGee admitted that he wished he had had more time to polish the game by compressing the action, removing a lot of the "filler" content and fixing some of the annoying bugs.[17]

Aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic gave the Windows version 74% based on 15 reviews and 75/100 based on 29 reviews,[18][30] the Xbox 360 version 73% based on 49 reviews and 70/100 based on 67 reviews,[19][22] and the PlayStation 3 version 71% based on 35 reviews and 70/100 based on 52 reviews.[20][23]

GamesRadar+ included it in their list of the 100 most overlooked games of its generation. Editor Jason Fanelli felt that it was a worthy sequel yet also felt that players would have to overlook problems to enjoy its qualities.[31]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Alice: Madness Returns.

• Official website
• Alice: Madness Returns at IMDb