Dear Insane Children, 

Omri and I are working on the Map of Alice: Asylum starting with the first moments of the game and first stage we’ll explore. We start with Shock and then move into Denial. Omri and the art team will spend the next week+ defining visually the areas we see from the start of the game up until we enter Denial. 

Spoiler Warning – Story and Game Details Ahead – Spoiler Warning

Scroll to “Spoilers Over” if you don’t wish to read these details. 

Here’s my note to Omri on the topic of Shock – how Alice arrives there, what she finds there, and how the transitions to the next area. These are initial notes, a rough sketch, upon which we’ll brainstorm, generate art, and then build our design. 

Ok… been thinking about this over the weekend. I’ll share what I have so far and then you and I can shape it into something… 

First, we need to establish a mood, a setting, our characters, etc. That means the game might open on Alice’s normal life pre-fire. I still like the idea of something slow and peaceful – like building a snowman with her sister. This is the stage we call “Slumber.” 

That will transition (somehow) into the Prelude.

https://www.americanmcgee.com/asylumwiki/index.php?title=Prelude 

This section might be largely cinematic – but in a walk-through mode… player still controlling Alice’s movement but on a sort of rail system where the only real option is to continue forward. 

 Prelude then gives way to Shock. I think this starts in a fashion similar to the start of Slumber – whiteout, snow falling, are we building another snowman? 

https://www.americanmcgee.com/asylumwiki/index.php?title=Shock 

As your list suggests, there are some elements we’ve already established. White sky, the burning/burnt house, cold, flakes of ash, flakes of snow, ghostly echoes of Alice and her family going through the motions of life pre-fire.

The first thing Alice does in this environment is pick up her White Rabbit Plush (from the snow where Alice fainted after her escape from the fire). Acquiring the Plush unlocks (ability? helper dialog from the rabbit? what?). 

Shock is a stage of helplessness – so Alice will only be able to move around (stumble) and will be unequipped for fighting. She will have stealth abilities (given to her by acquiring the White Rabbit?) which she can use to avoid – Insert Enemy Which Feeds of Alice’s XYZ. 

Question: How does one overcome shock? First, it takes Time. Do we find a representation of Time and make that part of the task list for this area? Perhaps this is where we deliver the Rabbit Clock Bomb item? Second, it takes a distraction. You cannot escape from Shock by focusing on the shock. Alice should acquire her List Holder and the tasks contained within. Tasks will take Alice’s mind off the state of Shock. What is the List Holder? A diary, notepad, book, or ??? 

Alice explores as prompted by the White Rabbit. She discovers the Clock Bomb and her Notepad. The Clock Bomb is used to overcome previously insurmountable obstacles. The Notepad gives Alice details on tasks she needs to complete in order to move forward and escape Shock. 

Thought: The Notepad could be Alice’s “List of Chores” as given to her by her mother. The List would have been mentioned in the opening scene of the game – Alice’s mother calling to her and Lizzie, “Get back inside and take care of your chores.” 

From Shock Alice transitions into Denial. I do not think we need to make clear the spatial relationship between these areas until later in the game when we’re able to see a large map of Wonderland or view the whole as a vista in the sky. When you are in Shock you don’t know it – you can’t think of a “next step” or even grasp the reality of where you were before you went into Shock. 

Denial is a kind of protective mechanism after Shock begins to become too much. Her transition into Denial could literally be the donning of an old dress (which we’ll dub The Denial Dress). In the act of wearing the dress, Alice transports herself away from the numb horror of Denial and into the following stage (Denial). 

So… that means that Alice’s Chore List will contain an item (like “clean your wardrobe”) which leads to the Denial Dress which leads to the next stage of the game. 

In between, we’ll want to jump, swing, climb, use the Clock Bomb, sneak, jump, duck… what other Basic Movements are we teaching the player in this stage? 

—

In terms of art style, I think you have a pretty good grasp on how to render this scene. It should give us the visual feeling of a constant ringing in our ears, of a nonstop feeling of vertigo. Shock is the complete loss of our grip on reality. Everything we thought we knew is a lie. And our minds race back through past events trying to put everything in the context of the new reality. What could we have done to avoid this? Whose fault is this? What do I do now? What’s the point of doing anything if all my previous planning and effort can be so easily shattered? 

Shock feels shattered – mind and soul are shattered into many pieces. Another chance to represent the world as floating/broken chunks. Shock contains lots of pop-up surprises as your mind catches on some recollection, some phrase, some sensation from the past. Find a way to represent the swirling miasma, tornado of thought… 

—

That’s my thinking on Shock. Please let me know what you have in mind. 

Spoilers Over

Of the image Omri originally created to represent this area (posted above) he says: 

We have / Had so many fire images, i think the color scheme of Red/orange/Black is just overdone. I worked according to the wiki, The burnt house is in the middle, i thought that for me, Shock is like a flash of light. I think artistically it really resonates with Bright white light. The cyan color i think fits better than, Again, fire and brimstone.

The house is in the middle of the island, a bright white sky, burnt flakes, Cyan Eye, Chaos symbol integrated.

I put Alice in her hospital dress and the rabbit will be with her, both looking at the house from a far, him comforting her. I want this image powerful but bleak and to stay away from the fire’s heat. Making it more detached so the shock factor will pass to the viewer better. for me the Fire is indication for Trauma, not shock.

—

So that’s what we have for Shock right now. Feel free to leave your feedback in the comments below. 

—

Crowd Design Session

There’s another Crowd Design Session on the calendar for tomorrow at the usual time. That’s Tuesday, May 14th in Hong Kong – Monday, May 13th in Los Angeles. Here’s the timetable: 

We host these sessions over on our Discord Server. You gain access to that by pledging $5 (or more) for a month (or more). Your payment has to process for one month before access is granted (this is Patreon’s setup, not ours). 

For more info on Discord, what it is, how to use it, hit THIS LINK. 

From Shanghai with Shock,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

<Insert Insane Happy Screaming> 

<Insert Crazy Giggling>

Look at that cute little tail! <Insert Aaaaaaaa!>

<Insert Mental Excitement>

Well.

I am only going to say this: Very surprised with the initial quality of this first prototype. I had expected we’d get back something that was 20%~30% on-target and would have to submit tons of comments, then go through 2~3 more prototypes. But… this is looking really good. 

Before myself and our creative team here at Mysterious drop our comments… 

Let’s here what you have to say!

Time for the Insane Children to engage their Crowd Design powers. Give us your reaction and feedback in the comments below. We’ll then discuss all that  during a live stream next week. And then we can turn around those comments to the design shop and get another (maybe final?) prototype made. 

So much fun!

Yay!

From Shanghai with Meow!

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

One of the frustrating things about the process of securing rights, funding, and publishing for a new Alice game is that many of the conversations are held under NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). That means I am legally obligated to keep quiet about the parties to and contents of these conversations. 

That is especially frustrating when I am aware of excellent news but unable to share it with you.

This morning is one of those frustrating times. 

Just know that if I could tell you, you’d be happy. Today marks a significant move forward in the process moving us towards our goal of getting Asylum made.

I should be able to announce this news by June/July… so you won’t have to hold your breath too long. Fingers crossed.

Anyway… YAY!

From Shanghai with Shhhhh,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Let’s celebrate our insanity!

We’ve got an Exclusive Special Reward for May. To celebrate 3000+ Inmates in the Asylum we’re producing individually numbered Rutledge Asylum Patient Tags and mailing them to Patrons around the world! 

Are you Certified Insane? Now you’ll have the tag to prove it!

Every new and existing Patron at $15 (and above) for the month of May 2019 will receive a Rutledge Asylum Patient Tag – mailed anywhere in the world, with tracking, and shipping is included for FREE. 

How does this work?

If you’re an existing Patron at $15 or above – do nothing! You’ll get this tag automatically. 

If you’re an existing Patron at less than $15 – bump up your pledge for May! 

And if you’re not a Patron – WHY NOT?! Join the Insane Children and Get Certified!

This offer is only good for THIS MONTH (May of 2019). Once it’s over, it’s OVER. And the only way you’ll ever get one of these tags is here, now, on Patreon, THIS MONTH. So… 

Don’t be late! Don’t miss out! 

Tags are stainless steel. There is one (1) tag per set which also includes a chain necklace. They will be individually numbered from #0000 to #3500 (end number based on the number of eligible Insane Children). 

From the Asylum,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Live Stream Info is down below! Don’t miss it!

All aboard! We’re taking a ride through Wonderland aboard the Looking Glass Railway. 

Pictured above is Omri’s updated render of Joey’s original Wonderland Map for Asylum. Along with this image Omri sends a series of questions which will help us define important details regarding the layout and navigation of Wonderland in Asylum. 

Let’s go through these points and provide some feedback…

 1. do we want 2 stations for each area, that is the Entrance and Exit? personally, i don’t think we need that, i think for each area we should “open” the tracks to the next area, in that way the player will go to the edge of the map and come back, very exploratory. you won’t be able to visit somewhere you didn’t visit before.

Each area can have more than one station. And these don’t need to be “entrance” and “exit” … we might have “Depression Gardens” and “Vale of Tears” as stations both located in the area of “Depression.” The order in which we access these or how we arrive at them… we’ll have to decide as we flesh out the narrative and Alice’s overarching journey. She might arrive in an area like Depression via some route other than the Railway – dropped off by Gryphon flying overhead, launched out of a circus cannon… endless possibilities. 

For now, you can place a single station in each domain and we’ll expand on these as needed. 

2. Did i forget an area? can you think of something? “Vale of tears” can appear on Depression/ but places we already “know” but we don’t have “wonderland woods” for example… where should it appear? or should it?

Yeah, we can define these but let’s get the big pieces in place first. As for the big pieces… looks like they are all there. I am a bit concerned about the idea of our “hub” being in the 6th area and not visited (presumably) until pretty far into the game. We should kick this around a bit and think about how that will feel to the player. Maybe it’s OK to leave out the hub until around the middle of the game? 

3. Overall 9 large areas not including smaller areas like: “water areas” between Bargaining and Depression, (as Vale of tears can be the opening for Depression) but that place for instance doesn’t have to have a station, but could.

9 large areas but there can be smaller stations within each area… depends on how big we make those areas. For the larger castle-type levels, perhaps there’s a simple linear progression through from point A to B… so we only need a station at the start/end. For other, more open-world type areas, we might need multiple stations. Again, large chunks first, and then we can start thinking about this aspect of the layout. 

4. Shock should have a station? do we even want people to re-visit there? Perhaps we need to conciser having Alice “Fall” from shock to Denial, like in the book. Having the Denial station at the edge of denial. I still don’t understand how the Moon merges into the storyline but she should visit there after the circus theme.

Shock is special and I don’t think we’ll revisit it. In my mind, it’s highly linear, likely to contain quite a lot of scripted/canned/cinematic moments. 

5. i don’t want the stations to be compared to Level select.

To avoid that, we’ll need to make good use of repeated travel between the areas. 

6. i think for now i have enough data to design each of the stations, as you said, they will be a building in an area, i think for each one there will be a puzzle in the theme of the area. the Hud will be grand but the rest of them will be smaller. we need a Tram pass, elements specific to opening the tracks and fixing them along the story.

Sounds about right! 

What say you, Insane Children? 

Sonny also sent over a rough draft of an interior shot of the Main Station. You can see the Mock Turtle keeping an eye on the scene. The building is constructed of books… and filled with normal humans? Hmmm… can’t have that! 

This is a good start but I think we want to capture a more cathedral-library-station type of feeling. I’ll ask Sonny to think about how to revise this. And we’ll also see Omri’s version of this soon. 

Omri also produced this exterior view of the Main Station as seen in the realm of Depression. This area contains the Toy Store (run by “Bumby” in an earlier form), the Vale of Tears, and perhaps a link to an underwater graveyard. Once the player accesses this area we’ll be able to quickly re-visit other areas of the game. But we might want to think about a ticketing system which we can use to limit travel based on where we want the player to be and when. 

As a way of prompting the player to get to the next area/mission in a timeline manner… the train station could be where we find a schedule of trains and hear announcements that certain trains are waiting for “Passenger A. Liddell” – a nice prompt to get on with it! 

Shaping the World

This is an exciting step in the process of developing the structure and design of Asylum. It comes as a result of Omri organizing tasks and deliverables for our art and design team. With Omri, Alex, Joey, Norm, Sonny, and other artists contributing towards the Asylum Design Bible, it’s important that tasks be properly distributed and scheduled. I’ve been doing my best to manage this process but find myself falling behind more and more – so it’s great to have Omri on board helping with this! 

Celebrating Our Insanity – Patron Reward!

A while back we sent out Inmate Certificates to our first ~500 Patrons. Now with over 3000 Patrons, I was thinking we should do something special to celebrate our little Asylum full of Insane Children. 

We could do another Inmate Certificate… but I feel like “been there done that,” plus we saw some of those cards get really bent up in the mail. So I had this idea…

We can produce individually numbered Patient Tags and mail them around the world to all of our Insane Children. The tags themselves don’t cost much to manufacture but shipping, taxes, and fees make it so we can only offer these at the $15 Tier and above. ($14 is our COST on manufacturing, taxes, fees, and shipping (to the US) so this is as close to “free” as we can get!)

If you’re already at $15 (or above) you’d get this automatically, without having to change a thing, BTW. Those of you at a tier lower than $15 could bump up for the month if you were interested. Anyway…

Do you all want to make this happen? We can do it this month if you’re interested. 

Let me know in the comments below! Yay!? Nay?!

Btw, I would love to have individual names on each tag – and that is technically possible – but it creates the nightmare of sorting through thousands of tags to find a name and attach it to a shipping label for that person. Based on experience we know this sort of thing would result in great sadness and possibly death. You don’t want to kill me and Font Lord, do you?

Live Stream Fun Time With Font Lord and Stick Boy

Another week, another live stream! Join us at the regular time over on my YouTube Channel.

Hit THIS LINK to set a reminder and join the fun. 

There will be prizes, Font Lord, Lulu, and more!

Be sure to get all your SUGGESTIONS and QUESTIONS into the comments below!

See you there!

From Shanghai with Choo Choo, 

-American (and Loolooooo!)

Dear Insane Children, 

Our Crowd Design process on the new Cheshire Kitten Plush Toy moves forward! Omri’s sent over a Spec Sheet (version 4) with updates based on YOUR comments and feedback. Lots of great ideas contained in this update – many thanks to YOU!

This version is now with the factory (same group who made the White Rabbit Plush) and will be turned into a production sample within a few weeks. 

Compared to the White Rabbit Plush, the Cheshire Kitten contains a lot more embroidery and custom design. It will also require the production of custom eyes. The result of all this extra detail should be a plush toy of excellent quality and character – but these elements won’t come free. 

It will be interesting to see how all of this impacts the production costs. Within a small %, those increases can be hidden within the retail cost. If there’s a large increase in costs… then we’ll have to discuss compromises. 

But let’s wait a little while and see what the factory sends back! Might be another Cheeto Monster! Might be a ready-to-produce masterpiece. My guess is that it’ll be somewhere in the middle.

At this point, I think we can all reserve design feedback on the design sheet and wait for the production model to be delivered. Once we have that in hand I’ll share pictures and we can resume the design feedback. 

Btw, I really love this process! It’s so much fun to design things in a group. I look forward not only to the updates from our design team but also to the feedback from you, the Insane Children in our Crowd Design Team. Thank you, for being a fun part of the process! 

Alex sends over an updated version of the Cheshire Nylon Bag in which we’ll send out the Cheshire Kittens. His design also reflects changes made based on your comments. 

This version is, in my opinion, closer to a design we might call “final.” What do you think? 

The only thing I am not a fan of… is the AMG “American McGee Official Merchandise” element. 

Several reasons for this. First, I am not one to wear other people’s brands. Most of my t-shirts are plain, single color, and devoid of external brand markings. The exception I’ll make is for “bold” art/symbol designs – but those also can’t be too closely related to a brand or brand logo. 

That being said, I don’t mind a subtle “tag” here and there on my clothing or shoes. I just don’t want to be a walking billboard. And I don’t expect the people who carry or wear my stuff to be one either. 

Second, it’s confusing to have both the Mysterious brand and this new “AMG” brand on the same bag and on the same side of the bag. Reminds me of these shoes I see at the knockoff markets here in China… 

So, Alex, this is a big “nope.” Let’s just keep the paw clean and free of branding! I’d suggest we remove the AMG branding as well as the Mysterious branding. For the Mysterious brand, we’ll print tags and sew those into the bag on the inside. (Same comment for the Mysterious branding on both sides of the bag). 

What do you think, Insane Children? Let us know your feedback in the comments below.

We look forward to hearing from you! 

From Shanghai in a Plain T-shirt,

-American