Dear Insane Children, 

Get ready for another weekly Livestream on YouTube!

Hit THIS LINK to set a reminder. 

We’ll discuss updates to the Cheshire Kitten Plush – I do have Version 3 IN HAND!

The Cheshire Lair (pictured above) is what we think you’ll gain (early) access to when you acquire the Cheshire Kitten Plush Collector Set. It’s a secret location in Wonderland which you can only enter if you have the Code provided with the Collector Set. 

As with the Rabbit Dress this unique location will be accessed with that code by Insane Children with the Kitten Plush Collector Set – and then released to everyone else after an appropriate amount of time. 

Next question is… what sort of Goodies should we hide in the Cheshire Cat’s Lair?! 

Lots of other bits of art, design, and narrative to discuss as well… 

A lovely little bit of concept artwork for the Train Stations we’ll find located all over Wonderland.

Crowd Design Session #13

13 is my Lucky Number and Session #13 felt quite lucky. We covered lots of interesting topics and heard great feedback from our Insane Children. 

You can check that out via THIS LINK. 

Topics for Tomorrow

A few more bits of artwork for characters, weapons, and locations – all of which will be discussed in detail during tomorrow’s Livestream. Please join us! 

Suggestions? Feedback? Please leave those in the Comments below and we’ll address those tomorrow as well. 

From Shanghai in The Lair,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

First up, a NOTICE regarding the next Crowd Design Session! Here’s the timetable:

We host these sessions on our Discord Server. Hit THIS LINK to read more about Discord and how to access our server. 

If you’d like to join the discussion about Alice: Asylum design, story, and more – this is the place! Join us!

Storyboard Update

Joey sends along updated storyboards for the opening scene(s) of Asylum. These detail what we’ll (maybe) see at the start of the game.

As a complete intro to the next adventure, I think it’s great. How this fits into our vision of entering the game in a sort of “bystander” mode, viewing the world through Alice’s eyes, and experiencing life before the fire… there are some bits missing. 

I’m thinking it might work like this: 

Fade from White – Snow drifting from a slate grey sky as the camera pans down on the Liddell House. The camera flies through a window and into Alice’s room. We have Control of Alice as our Player Character. 

Over the next 5~10 minutes we live a life in the day of Alice Liddell (pre-fire). This gives us an introduction to interface, controls, and Alice’s backstory. 

Night falls. Alice is tucked into bed and…

 Fade from White – Snow drifting from a slate grey sky as the camera pans down on the Liddell House. 

NOW enter into Scene 2-Frame 4 (the girls building a snowman). 

That gives us the gameplay interaction at the start, slow build introduction, and the intro cinematic with transition into Wonderland.

Do I think this is final? No. But it’s a great placeholder for now. And, who knows? Maybe it’ll be the final intro to the game. As we go forward I’d like to explore the following: 

a) Is there a point in the intro for exposition/coverage of Alice’s entry into the Asylum?
b) If (a) isn’t at the start, where does it take place?
c) How are we handling transitions from Wonderland back to reality?
d) How might (c) get us back to scenes in the Asylum to deliver more of (a)? 

Certified Insane Tags – Shipping Update

Tags will start sending to Insane Children THIS WEEK. Expect ~30 Business Days for delivery to most people around the world. 

Keep in mind the following! As soon as we have tracking numbers from our logistics partner those numbers will be loaded into Backerkit and you’ll automatically receive an email with  the tracking link. And…

There are MULTIPLE BATCHES of tags going out – depending on when you completed your survey and when Font Lord uploaded that info to our logistics partner. If you see others receiving their tracking links or tags before you: stay calm.

After all that, wait until the End of July to ask Font Lord for tracking info if you feel you have reason for concern. You can do that by PM’ing US.  

Lulu Running, Swimming, and Jumping!

We all love Lulu. And Lulu loves you too! 

Yesterday might have been the most fun Lulu’s ever had in a single day. And if you’re feeling sad and need a smile… you could find worse ways to cheer up than to watch this :30 second clip of Lulu running, swimming, and jumping. 

CLICK HERE to feel joy with Lulu. 

From Shanghai with Smiles,

-American (and Lulu)

Dear Insane Children, 

Our team of artists and designers, powered by your support, continue cranking out some really amazing ideas. The main effort these days is focused on the events that lead us into the story of Alice: Asylum… The Fire, Alice’s confrontation with Chaos, and her transition into the Stage of Denial. 

With Denial we’re brainstorming another theatrical presentation (like the one you saw in Alice: Madness Returns) which makes sense when you think about what Denial represents. It’s the mind’s initial protection mechanism after being sent into Shock by a traumatic incident or series of events. It’s the safety net to catch us when the ground slips out from beneath our feet.

Many people, after experiencing trauma, find a way to persist in a state of Denial for extended or even infinite amounts of time. They “put on a show” “re-write the script” and “act” as if nothing ever happen. Many find it easier to stay in Denial by engaging with an ever-changing circus of distractions – work, exercise, entertainment, etc – than to confront the horror of what’s happened and commit to the effort required to learn and grow from it. 

So it makes sense that Alice’s Denial is represented as a literal circus and filled with all manner of distractions, acts, and shows. But it’s all an illusion – and a poorly crafted one at that. Then again, we’ll take any distraction we can get when the alternative is a shattered reality. 

In Alice: Madness Returns we presented a show by The Carpenter and Walrus. This time around it’s a circus put on by Tweedle Dee and Dum. It’s likely we’ll see Alice conscripted to play a role in the circus – and we’ve talked about seeing her forced to wear a Circus Dress. Others too are forced to wear ill fitting skins… 

How will Alice finally escape from this land of illusion so that she can continue her journey towards truth? 

Sitting at the center of Denial (the circus fairgrounds) we’ll find a House of Horrors. Perhaps it’s abandoned? Or requires a currency we don’t yet possess. Or, at first glance, is simply NOT THERE. Alice doesn’t see it until other little cracks begin to appear in the facade of Denial. But appear it does – right at the center of Denial. A hulking house of horrors through which we must pass if we’re going to escape the emotional coma. 

That escape will cause dissonance – the uncomfortable feeling we get when reality doesn’t align with our expectations. Dissonance triggers our fight or flight response. And when we can no longer flee we’re forced to fight. And fight is exactly where Alice is heading – from Denial to Anger and the realm of the Queen of Hearts. 

Speaking of Anger

A lot people carry a bit of anger towards EA – the owners of the Alice IP. And there are often voiced concerns about EA’s role in Alice: Asylum and how that role might threaten or destroy our efforts here. Insane Child IceKiller mentioned this in a question during a recent livestream and I provided an answer – which I’ve now uploaded as a single short video response. 

If you too are concerned about this issue (you shouldn’t be!) then head over to YouTube and watch my explainer. Hit THIS LINK to do that now! 

It’s Sunday here in Shanghai and the days of rain have given way to blue skies and sunshine. I hope that wherever you are it’s beautiful and bright. Lulu sends her love.

From Shanghai with Sunshine,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

During our last Crowd Design Session we discussed the possibility of seeing Lizzie represented as the Red Queen. Hit THIS LINK to jump to that part of the discussion – where Insane Child Kyo brought this up as we riffed around the topic of the Voices in Alice’s head… what they represent and how they battle one another. 

Omri heard this suggestion and put together a visual representation of the idea (which you can see above). 

I like the idea that Lizzie represents an aspect of Alice’s personality standing in opposition to the Queen of Hearts. Where the Red Queen advocates flexibility, creativity, and integration of all the parts – The Queen of Hearts represents conformity, obedience, rules… All of this nicely mirrors Chaos vs. Order. 

It’s also nice that a Queen in Chess (kinda) contains all the moves of the other pieces. Moves (experiences, abilities) Lizzie would recognize or know due to her greater range of life experience vs. Alice.  

At the end of Asylum we’ll see Young Alice must integrate her shadow (Chaos) self in order to reach her goal. This allows Adult Alice to reintegrate her Child Self and complete her journey. And this leaves Alice in a state of complete integration – all her “enemies” are integrated into her self (in healthy ways) and she can grow from the physical damage and traumatic events of the real world. 

So long as you can wrap your head around the psycho-inception it should provide a satisfying ending to this chapter of Alice’s adventures.

What do you think? Leave your comments below! We’ll discuss those during tomorrow’s Livestream! (more on that below)

Cheshire Kitten Design Update

The workshop sends along photos of the most recent update to the Cheshire Kitten Prototype. 

From these pictures it appears that we’ve got a couple of asked-for changes: 

1) New tattoos on the face (sides)
2) Bolder tattoos on the head
3) Color change on the nose/gums
4) Slightly more shape in the face?

I’ll share some more pictures and thoughts once the prototype arrives at our studio. Until then please share your thoughts on these photos in the comments below. 

What do I think? Well… I think we’ve got pretty much everything we asked for. The only thing we never hit 100% was the face shape. Aside from that, he’s pretty damn great. Even with that… there seem to be plenty of people who don’t mind the face shape as-is (I am among them). 

Based on these pictures – I’ll reserve final judgement to when I have the sample in hand – I think we’re good to move ahead with mass production. 

That being said, we still have time and space to make changes if our Crowd Design team feel changes are really necessary. 

We’re still waiting on a Bag Sample. That process is moving slower because we’ve had to adjust the bag design and work through a bunch of fabric samples – none of which has produced content worthy of sharing here. Once we have a Bag Sample in hand (should be soon) I will share images and thoughts. 

We did get the embroidered patches made – and we fixed the “earring on the wrong side” issues. Yay!

We ALL still need to think of a Digital Asset to attach to the Cheshire Kitten Plush Collector Set. Something like Early Access to some aspect of the game which you only get with a code (we’ll email you) from this Collector Set. Any Ideas? Leave those in the comments below!

Livestream Tomorrow!

Let’s discuss ALL THIS STUFF and MORE during the YouTube Livestream tomorrow. 

Hit THIS LINK to head over and set a reminder. 

See you all tomorrow!

Notes from Font Lord

The Certified Insane Tags have arrived with our logistics partner in Shenzhen. Still some data wrangling going on before they are instructed to start shipping those to Insane Children around the world. 

About 300 of you still haven’t clicked on the link sent to you via email to complete your survey. If you don’t click your link, you can’t have any pudding. Check those spam folders! Click those links! Complete those surveys! 

The first data extraction will happen on Friday 21st and that will result in the first wave of tags being shipped. If you want to be in that wave, click your links! 

From Shanghai with Love, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

I’ve just posted the Discord Crowd Design Session from last week over on YouTube. If you missed the live event you can listen/watch what we got up to via THIS LINK. 

This stream captured a lot of interesting discussions and generated some great thinking.

We’ll host another Crowd Design Session via Discord tomorrow at the usual time. 

Want to join us? You’ll need Discord Access! That’s granted to every Insane Child who has pledged $5 (or more) for a month (or more). To maintain your Discord access you need to maintain your pledge. To learn more about Discord click on THIS LINK. 

Design Wiki

All of this effort is driving the creation of design, art, and narrative for Alice: Asylum. You can find a lot of the output over on the Alice: Asylum Design Wiki.

All that content will eventually form the Design Bible we use to drive the development of a new game. 

Material like this was also created during pre-production on Alice: Madness Returns. 

Speaking of… here’s a big chunk of that material so you have some idea what we’re building towards for Asylum…

 Madness Returns Design Freebies!

Yay, FREE STUFF! Here are two .zip files containing various design materials you might find interesting and fun to look at.

newdrop.zip contains VO Scripts, Design Walkthroughs, and Art/Layout Documents from Chapters 1-6 from Alice: Madness Returns.
CLICK HERE to download newdrop.zip

vert_slice.zip contains Design Walkthroughs, Visual Effects Designs, Maps, and more from the Alice: Madness Returns “Vertical Slice” production phase.
CLICK HERE to download vert_slice.zip 

I hope you enjoy this peak behind the scenes of Alice: Madness Returns. 

Note: There are broken links contained in these files – pointers to network drives which no longer exist. Please don’t write to report those or ask for the content to which they previously pointed. These files are offered as-is with no further support or explanation. 

See you all tomorrow for the Crowd Design Session!

From Shanghai with Headless Rabbits,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Omri’s supplied us with a (final?) revisions sheet for the Cheshire Kitten Plush. This is based on your feedback here on Patreon and via our weekly livestreams over on YouTube. 

We had a fun livestream yesterday in which the Cheshire Kitten and your comments pertaining to him were discussed at length. If you miss a livestream you can always watch it later. 

Hit THIS LINK to see the one from yesterday. 

And while you’re there make sure you hit the Subscribe button so you are notified when we send out reminders for future livestreams and when we go live.

Crowd Design Kitten

In this (final?) round of feedback we’re still trying to get more shape out of the head. Though I did discover yesterday that the head shape can be “adjusted” by smushing (technical term) his head. And I realized that perhaps the “flatness” we’re seeing is a result of compression during shipping. Something to keep in mind when your kitten arrives at your door!

We’re also asking for some adjustments to the size and placement of his tattoos. 

Lastly, we’re asking for exact colors to be used on his gums and nose. The question of gum/nose color was also discussed yesterday – and voted on! The lighter “peach” color won in a landslide vs. the red color. Though this might not be technically accurate (when compared to a marketing illustration of the Cheshire) it certainly feels “right” when looked at in context of this plush toy. The peach color is just much more complimentary and suitable in this situation. And, hey, he’s a kitten. Maybe he’s not become totally blood-soaked just yet? 

What happens next? We’ll send this revision requests to the workshop. They’ll produce another sample (takes around 2 weeks). We’ll review that sample and – if approved – we’ll push it into mass production. 

That means we still have another sample coming upon which we can comment. 

As I said on the stream, it’s difficult to address a single issue raised by a single individual, as doing so based on hundreds of individual points of feedback would result in this (or any project) never getting done. If you feel there’s something *super important* which needs to be addressed in this process then it’s best if you can get a group of people on your side to argue that point. That doesn’t guarantee we can always address the request but it will help the request gain more visibility. 

You can jump to a portion of “Kitten Review” from the livestream HERE. 

Tags Are Done!

The workshop creating the necklaces and individually numbers tags has completed their production task! Yay! 

These are being sent to our logistics partner and will then start making their way to Insane Children around the world. 

Lots of people report finding the survey email in their spam folder by searching for the word “survey” – try that! 

If you still have questions or concerns regarding the tags PM US!

Hit THIS LINK to learn how to do that. 

Vorpal Umbrellas SOLD OUT

With add-ons to the Insane Tags so many of you selected the Black Handle Vorpal Umbrella that they SOLD OUT. If you added on one of these (after they sold out), it’s been automatically removed from your order. And we’re going to UNLOCK your order so you can go back and add the Silver Handle Vorpal Umbrella (in case you’d like to switch). 

Just be aware, there are only 95 of the Silver Handle Umbrellas remaining in stock. 

You have until next Friday (21st of June) to make any changes to your unlocked order. 

If you have any questions about this issue PM US!

 Hit THIS LINK to learn how to do that.  

(Please, don’t post questions about support, rewards, shipping, etc in the Comments or Community Section. We can’t effectively keep track of and respond to issues there. Thank you for your understanding!) 

The Next Art Print

“Perfectly Unbalanced” is the latest amazing illustration from Omri and it’s scheduled to be the art print going out automatically to those of you at the $75 Tier. It will also be made available as a print you can select if you’re doing the $35/3 Tier. 

This is certainly one of my favorite art prints of late and will end up being framed and hung in a place of honor at my house.

As always, looking forward to your feedback in the comments below!

And a quick reminder that all this art, creativity, and amazing progress is a direct result of YOUR loving support. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. So a giant THANK YOU! 

There’s some interesting (but slow) progress going on behind the scenes… hope I can say more about that stuff soon! 

From Shanghai with Fun Secrets, 

-American (and Lulu – in the doghouse for going in the trashcan!)