Dear Insane Children,

First up: A quick note to confirm that there will be NO live stream today. Sorry about that – but I have been super busy across projects and personal life such that I’m not able to set aside the time. For the record, when we do a live stream it really means a “live stream day” for me since it involves Martin coming over at 8AM and not leaving until 8PM (or later) due to his dislike of traffic on an elevated freeway. So it’s an all-day commitment and, recently, I’ve just not had a full day to set aside. 

We will resume our regular live stream schedule next week (10th of December) and we’ll have TONS of stuff to cover at that time!

Be sure to subscribe over on Twitch to be notified when we go live: 

www.twitch.tv/americanmcgee 

Chamber of Anger

In my last post, I shared the Alice: Asylum Narrative Outline. And several of our Insane Children are busy engaging with Crowd Design around the narrative. If you don’t mind spoilers and want to join the conversation, hit the link above, and check out the comments section. 

Mentioned in the outline is a section where Alice makes her way through the Queen’s Dungeons… a place filled with lots of angry prisoners. 

The final Boss of this section of the game is Fire Alice (main image, above). She occupies a special chamber just below the Queen’s Throne Room. Omri sent over an initial sketch of this area and the encounter. About which he said: 

OK this took me a moment but American you said that the ceiling leads towards the queen’s throne room. i think it only makes sense for it to look like a doorway?

if we are doing the room Eshcer style of course we can make it far more complex then this – and i will add  platforms and stuff but- please tell me if This is the right direction.

my thought was to use chains with the chaos as one and using arms as the main enemy. nothing too human and defined not to take away from the child’s look.

i can imagine the player doing a boss fight and then trying to figure out how to get to the ceiling… that’s the point.

To which I replied: 

Alice doesn’t travel through that door by “normal” walking, jumping type movement. She gets there because she’s magically lifted up through it and into the Throne Room by the Queen of Hearts.

That being said, I still like the design you’ve presented here. It’s great. But you don’t need to worry about making it functional for the player to traverse.

This is one of those emergent details that I really like – Omri designed the room to look like you might actually climb up through the door at the top… but we’ll ultimately be lifted up through it by a magical force used by The Queen. 

Let us know in the comment below what you think of this scene. 

And how many of you are avoiding the Narrative stuff because you don’t want to read or see spoilers? I’d love to know! 

Decision Coin – Crowd Design

Alex is applying his amazing coin-design skills to the 2020/3-Year Anniversary Coin.

After chatting with him for a while, we hit on the idea to present a Decision Coin – one that, when flipped, comes up with either a “YES” or “NO” type of design. In this case, we’re thinking it would be something like “ADVENTURE” (follow the White Rabbit) or “DEATH” (you fell into lava). 

He wrote in a follow-up note about these designs: 

Rabbit on the “yes” side (The Fall Continues). An allusion to tumbling further down the rabbit hole.

Skull and Fire Alchemy Symbol on the “no” side (Everything Ends), with relation to 2020.

On the rabbit side, I’ve worked in a “3” which is dual representative of the 3 years celebrating the Patreon, and also, the third potential game in the series. It’s abstract enough for the dual meaning to land with the target audience. 

The skull side has some vorpal blade-ish vines, and some heradlry and loose crown / queen motifs. Chaos is in there too, but in more of abstract way, more representative of the Chaos of 2020.

Both sides can be ringed in text, which is TBC, but again, this is the easiest thing to change or drop in when we’re ready.

…having the positive coin as “Madness Begins” or “Madness Continues” is a good riff on Madness Returns. “Everything Ends” is pretty final, but it could also be “Madness Ends”, in keeping it on brand and on tune.

When he mentions it being “ringed in text” – it’s in reference to this…

Where you can see that lines of text are wrapped around the outside of the coin. We really like this design style and plan to include lines around the outside of both faces of our coin. 

Another Crowd Design opportunity… what’s the text say? 

I was thinking some classic Alice in Wonderland quotes like “believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast” and “all the running you can do, to keep in the same place” – what do you think? What AiW quotes are good for communicating Yes/No or Life/Death or Foward/Backward?

Let us know in the comments below! 

Rabbits Multiplying

I’ve mentioned before that I funnel all the Patreon money back into Patreon and our Art/Design Team, and that my family is supported by The Mysterious Shop. So whatever sells at Mysterious is what supports me, Yan, Lucky, and Lulu… and for a while now that’s been RABBITS.

It’s a strange thing but I guess it makes sense? We do a lot of marketing (when it’s working!) via Facebook and Instagram. And our Distressed, Love, and Angry Rabbits do really well with that audience. So we’re selling quite a few of the little critters these days. To the point where the Plush Rabbits and related products (hoodies, wallets) are always in the Top 5 Best Sellers every month. 

So… since they do so well, let’s make more! CROWD DESIGN TIME! 

But the question is… what design is going to appeal the most to that audience? 

I’ll tell you that the order of popularity for the existing rabbits is: 

Love, Distressed, Angry

And the Love Rabbit outsells everything else by a large margin. 

So, obviously the cute/love rabbit style is what gets people clicking and buying. 

Jen did up some new concepts and I’ll share them here: 

In terms of what you think would appeal to someone who bought a Love Rabbit, which rabbit above is the best? 

Feel free to pick one or say “none.” 

Got ideas for a Rabbit Type that we should sketch as a concept? 

I told Jen (half-jokingly) something like: Baby Momma Preggers Bunny AKA Baby Bun in the Oven Bunny. 

Let us know in the comments below what sort of cute/funny/awww type Bunny you’d like to see. Or maybe you have an excellent idea for a not-so-cute bunny. Share that too!

From Shanghai with A Bun Out of The Oven, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Ok, first off, I just want to say that I am very nervous about doing this… As a rule, I try to avoid sharing my Writing In Progress. Partly because I just don’t like sharing unfinished work. But I’ve pointed out previously, that’s hypocritical given that I am constantly sharing the unfinished work of our artists. It’s at the core of Crowd Design! 

The other thing I worry about – because it’s happened to me with previous stories – is losing my drive to finish writing. That’s already a tricky beast to manage – as anyone who writes for a living will tell you. And I know from other writers I’ve talked to that sharing work mid-stream is notorious for creating a loss in the drive to finish the thing… Let’s hope that doesn’t happen!

Anyway, here we are. 

I’m sharing The Outline of the Narrative for Alice: Asylum and opening it up to Crowd Design. 

The attached document contains the 1st and 2nd Acts with a brief outline for the 3rd Act. 

You are invited to engage with Crowd Design (Narrative) in the section at the end of what exists for the 2nd Act. In this section, we’ll want to fill in a sequence of missions Alice goes on to recover the Pieces of Champion. A good example of the type of thing we want to create is contained in the “Wonderland Woods” section (just prior to the Crowd Design section). 

Of course, you’re welcome to comment on any and all aspects of the narrative. And you’ll see that there are plenty of blanks (at least in this document) when it comes to the 3rd Act. I think we should try to save the heavy discussion about those sections until we’ve filled in a bit more on the 2nd Act. First, because I find the 2nd Act goes a long way towards creating the links that fill in the 3rd Act. Second, because the 3rd Act outline doesn’t fully capture the ideas I have for this section – so commenting on that stuff might be redundant. 

How To Share

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you write your initial thoughts in Word or Google Docs, then paste those things into the Patreon comments – especially if you’re writing more than a few lines. Remember, if you try to Edit a Comment it’ll probably get eaten by Patreon. Also, consider just using Google Docs and then sharing the LINK to your doc (make it public!) instead of relying on the terrible-bad Patreon Comments system. 

And try to keep your ideas and feedback concise. “Less Is More” – really!

OH! SPOILERS!

Yeah, TONS of Spoilers contained in that document, obviously. If you do not want the story revealed before you play the game, don’t read that document! You’ve been warned! 

Excited and nervous over here… let’s see how this goes! 

From Shanghai with Sharing Jitters,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

If you are in a place where it’s celebrated and you’re not opposed to it for social-political reasons, then allow me to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! At least… it’s Thanksgiving morning (but it’s not) here in Shanghai. This would normally be a Live Stream day but I am, as many of you are aware, taking a Mental Health Day. Yan ran away to Yunnan in Western China for a Girl Vacation…  

Leaving me home alone with Lucky and Vampire Grandma. Lucky’s too young to care about Thanksgiving and Vampire Grandma is too old… so… 

Martin (a Brit) will come over later and we’ll celebrate American Turkey Day with a couple of frozen margaritas at the nearby Mexican restaurant. In China. Because that totally makes sense! 

Anyway, here are a couple of Holiday Gifts from the art team. First up, Adam sends along final versions of the Dream Machine and Manipulator Generator… 

I shared some feedback with him…

The Manipulator (Making) Machine and the Dream Machine both look great. My thought on the Manipulator from the start was that it might need to be small – I think I said (or maybe I just thought) something like telephone booths (remember those?). Anyway, somewhere in the space between a large washing machine and a telephone booth… And I imagine we sprinkle these around areas where they are needed to generate Manipulators on demand. And they are targets for destruction (by Alice) so that the production of Manipulators can be halted for a given area.

No, it doesn’t make sense to dress up the Manipulator Machines with any particular theme. They are utilitarian devices – existing only for the purpose of creating the machines that create illusion… and presumably always maintained “behind the scenes” of whatever production is going on in that place.

Would a Manipulator (masquerading as a Circus Performer) think it was funny to put a Circus Hat atop the machine that created it? I guess? But I would leave that sort of level specific “dressing” to the Level Artists to do when they are creating the actual levels in game.

Omri sends over the Final version of the Londerland Scene where we see Alice handing her Rabbit Plush to a street urchin… 

He says he thinks this might make a good Art Print for our Insane Children… 

What do you think? Should this one be an Art Print? Maybe … the December Art Print? 

CROWD DESIGN TIME

Alex is pulling art tasks from the Narrative Outline document that I’m writing and our art team is then illustrating those. One of the tasks that popped up this morning comes from the section after Judgement (The Courthouse) where Alice is sentenced to “Croak Forever” … that turns out to mean “play a surreal game of croquet forever.” 

Here’s a bit of an excerpt from the outline: 

Alice falls. Her scream grows louder until her dress pops open and she floats gently to the ground below. A large wooden sign announces “Welcome to Croquet – Play Forever”

A motley assortment of other players are here – and have been here forever. No time to explain, the match is starting. Alice is handed a mallet and told to get to her starting place.

We PLAY as a bemused Alice engages in an epic game of Croquet played across a landscape of floating islands. This game mixes some of the traditional rules with elements of racing, combat, and surreal nonsense. It’s broken into Chapters that increase in difficulty from Tutorial to Final Test – giving Alice a chance to improve her abilities before progressing to more challenging sections.

Here’s your Crowd Design task: 

Name the “motley assortment of other players” you’d like to see playing alongside Alice. 

Alex writes on this topic…

I feel a motley crew mix of random Wonderland inhabitants might work best, but I feel the theme should always be brought back to “Anger” with their designs. Maybe a disgraced Card Guard, some Fish People, Other inhabitants from other areas of the game… characters who don’t belong.

So let us know in the comments below what YOU think… what characters would we see playing Croquet Forever? 

Last is a bit of Heart for you to nibble on at Thanksgiving… eww.

Actually, this is the Giant Mechanical Heart powering The Moon. Alice disables it in order to wreck The Moon… then collects it (she gets big so it ends up the size of a marble relative to her)… for later use with upgrading The Jabberwock. Nice bit of work from Dario! 

I suggested that a bit of fleshy stuff could be integrated into the design – so expect to see that with the next revision.

That’s it for this morning! Hope everyone is safe and warm and happy… wherever you are and whatever you are (or are not) celebrating.  I look forward to your Crowd Design comments! 

From Shanghai Without Turkey,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Just a quick (and sad) note to say that there will be no Live Stream this week. We’re dealing with a Confluence of Stupidity that has me emotionally drained and technologically blocked. 

For several weeks now, we’ve been dealing with an issue at Facebook/Instagram where our Ad Account is Suspended without reason. This has happened several times now, resulting in lost business for Mysterious. We go through the Appeal Process and then get a “Sorry for the inconvenience” message. No other useful info or reply to our questions is offered. 

Now the account appears to be permanently shut down and we have no more option for Appeal. 

This could turn into a Major Life Event because it’s Mysterious that allows me to live the life of an Independent developer – and makes it possible for Yan to work from home after she was laid off from her “normal” job. If Mysterious were to suddenly vanish… I don’t know what we’d do. As everyone is well aware, it’s not the greatest time to be out searching for a new job, and that’s the same here in China as everywhere else.

Before anyone asks: Patreon money supports the team of seven artists working on all the projects you see being developed here. I try to run it “lean” meaning that there isn’t really cash left over after salaries, fees, taxes, shipping, and other expenses related to Patreon. Yes, adjustments could be made to have Patreon support me and my family but that would mean fewer artists being paid for by your support – not ideal and not my goal. 

Add to that stress the fact that there’s a major delay in trying to get our Astrill VPN account renewed. Payment has been sent but somehow not received. Their support team is blaming the pandemic but I don’t see how that has anything to do with transferring money around from bank to bank… 

In any case, if our VPN service gets shut down we’ll be essentially knocked off the (Western) Internet. So… more stress. 

Anyway, I am feeling exceptionally stressed out… not in any shape to host a stream. And our VPN service has kicked down to a non-VIP status, which means we’d probably experience lots of instability and Stream Death (TM).

I don’t mean to be a Debby Downer on Thanksgiving… just want to give full transparency into why there’s no stream this week. 

I really appreciate your support and would be in a full-blown nervous breakdown right now if it weren’t for knowing we’ve got a whole Asylum full of Insane Children to back us up. Much love to you all! 

PS: On the Good News Side of Things… [REDACTED 2] say they are looking for TV writers to attach to the Oz: Adventures series project. I think that’s huge? And [REDACTED] seem to have collected all the info they need for moving to the next step regarding helping to fund a new studio. Also huge, right? Maybe this will be one of those “one door closes, another opens” moment… Fingers crossed. 

From Shanghai with Turkeys, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

For those of you interested in Narrative Crowd Design, here’s a little teaser… which I hope to use to test out how this process works prior to sharing the Alice: Asylum narrative outline. I mentioned in a previous post that I want to share the Asylum outline with some holes in the middle – so that there’s a place where YOU can engage with Crowd Design and help fill in the details. 

But before we go down that particular Rabbit Hole… 

I’ve attached the Oz: Adventures (game) synopsis that I sketched over the weekend. 

This document is a response to a request made by [REDACTED] as we continue to go through their Due Diligence process. 

The basic question behind this document is: “We [REDACTED ]need something to describe the game for our internal discussions, and to explain how the episodic structure + playing as different characters would work.” 

So I’ve described the basic narrative for 4 episodes. But also left some bits blank or [TBD]. And I’ve left Episode 4 really blank… because one of the things we’re trying to sell in this pitch is that narrative will emerge as we develop the game, as players engage with the game, and as a part of the Crowd Design process. 

I kinda think we don’t want to know just yet what happens in Episode 4. We shouldn’t try to write that until we’ve delivered at least Episode 1 & 2… and then build Episode 4 around the feedback those generate. 

Think about the Crowd Design goals while you read the episode outlines. 

And let me know if you see openings for interesting character development, plot twists, etc, in what’s written so far. There are some obviously marked [TBD] areas where you might suggest interesting connections to the characters and locations of Oz. 

And just let me know, in general, do you “get it” – as a game divided into 4 pieces, delivered episodically, but ultimately stitched together into a cohesive final product that spans 8+ hours in length? 

Finally, let’s use the back and forth on this to define how best to manage Crowd Design around Narrative. 

From Shanghai with Kalidahs, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Our team of 7 artists continues to crank through a pile of tasks related to defining all the major scenes, characters, and elements that define the journey Alice takes through Alice: Asylum. If you’ve watched the live streams, you’ve seen me scrolling through all the tasks and discussions contained inside the management software we use (called Monday). As I go scrolling through Monday this morning (on a Sunday) I’m finding a ton of great updates… 

Let’s start with the Rutledge Asylum concept image from Joey (main image above). Of this Joey says: 

There are high bars around the asylum for sure, this image is inside the bars, where the building and the trees can be seen clearly.

And I replied with a bit of feedback: 

Looks like a proper and horrific Asylum! @Omri and @Joey

I don’t know if we need to deal with this next comment right now… but do we know where Rutledge Asylum is located? I kinda thought it was actually in the city of London… in which case, it would not look like this sort of “out in the country” massive building.

This image can still be marked as finished and we can use this for now… but we might need to revisit this later depending on the answer to the question above.

Let me know in the comments below your thoughts on the location of Rutledge Asylum. Does this new image do the old story justice? Are we retconning the location? Or does this image need to be updated so it’s more in line with what was previously established? 

Next up, Adam shares some concept sketches for The Lullaby Machine. This is the device used by The Moon to put Alice (and others) to sleep…  

These designs were inspired by a description I wrote: 

The Dream Machine should feature some sort of “mining” or “milking” section where we see Cute Little Creatures (chicks – cheeping; kittens – purring) behind vacuum chamber glass, creating some aspect of the sound that the device makes. It needs to be a giant Rube Goldberg type contraption where there’s a clear formula for “sugar and spice and everything nice” being funneled into a speaker and directed towards a target (Alice).

And of Adam’s concepts he wrote: 

Here are my sketches for the Lullaby Machine, the last, biggest one is the most recent evolution with the everything-nice-containers located around the machine, which Alice might need to break open in order to defeat the machine. Another weak-point would be it’s glowing eye with an iris in the shape of the moon, I’ve also given it eye-lids so maybe most of the time it’s closed and it only “wakes up” after a cage has been broken?

What do you think of the Lullaby Machine? 

Omri also shares a final render on the Scene in London where we see Alice handing her Rabbit Plush to a street urchin girl… 

This is a critical scene in the narrative that we’ll see at a point around 65% through the narrative – at or near the start of the 3rd act of the story. Still think we might find a way to weave this scene together with the Londerland variation… 

Though in terms of the way this fits into the narrative flow… I’ve not yet figured it out yet. Still thinking… 

Omri also did a quick update on the Pieces of The Champion… to have the Eye parts look more like what we know the Jabberwock Eyes to look like in the first two games (which we see clearly when looking at the Jabberwock Eye Staff). 

And Omri finalized the look and feel of the area we run through in The Circus… 

And some quick sketches of the fight sequence we’ll engage with as we play through this area… 

Adam also turned in some more final sketches from The Courthouse… 

In other words… There is a LOT of Collective Insanity going on inside The Asylum these days. 

And as many of you are aware, I am working through writing on several major deliverables… The Alice: Asylum overall narrative outline, The Oz: Adventures game synopsis (for REDACTED), and documents related to Oz: Adventures TV Series pitch (for REDACTED 2). 

For those of you interested in Narrative and Story… I’ve been thinking about opening up the mid-section of the story outline for Alice: Asylum to Crowd Design. I’ve got the Beginning and End basically finished. And I know roughly what needs to go in the middle – but I think there’s room there for YOU to get involved with filling in the blanks on the places Alice goes and the characters she meets. 

So… my hope is that in the coming week (23-27th of November), I’ll share the Alice: Asylum Story Outline (full of spoilers!) for everyone to read. And then invite the Insane Children to help fill in the details of the middle part of the adventure. I know there are a few of you who would really enjoy something like that, right? 

A BIG THANK YOU to our Insane Children for making all of this work possible. You’re directly supporting a team of Seven Whole Artists – and giving them to time and space necessary to create all of this amazing content. Woo!

Hope everyone is having a Wonderful Weekend.

From Shanghai with Love, 

-American