Dear Insane Children  

Just writing another update about next month’s print due to a little mess up I did from yesterday.

I wrote that Dressed in Rage was next month’s print due to a little confusion, and even though I figured it out and took the post down within a few minutes, this does not matter since all new posts we write get emailed to Patrons anyway. D’oh!

So now THIS post (with the clear details in the title) is the 2nd reminder to Patrons that those people charged in July will get Ringmasters and those people charged in August will get Dressed in Rage.

Sorry for the confusion    🙁

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

As you know from my last design post, we’re working on concepts for a selection of Enemies who are designed to manipulate Alice’s senses – Manipulators. In the last round of comments, I asked Omri to explore ideas around insect/machines that would fit in these roles. He’s delivered!

Here are our comments on what’s presented today. Omri says: 

I’m thinking about what you said, i don’t like the idea of holograms because it’s too modern. Yes there were plays with mirrors and stuff but that was more 1920. it’s still too modern. but i do like the idea of illusions or hallucinations. we can go towards two directions, 

1. we can have the illusions / hallucinations horrible like a nightmare

2. we can have the illusions / hallucinations Pleasant and block out the gameplay, like the more she is “injected/sprayed” she sees more flowers and gardens and her home in spring and what not. i think for this area it’s overkill right now, we need to reserve that idea for a boss. i would love to fight a boss that when i’m losing seeing the world more beautifully.

for now these two designs i think look practical for the moon AND look like enemies. i’ll design some more of these, but i think they make sense and still keep with the Nature theme.

Omri goes on to add a few more concepts and continues his comments:

I’m adding to the manipulators “Lobster” I think he can fix the “floors” and the lower areas. he can melee Alice and he can electrify floor areas where the player is standing. i want the enemies to “make sense” like you can imagine that an electricity based animal can fix circuits. a Welder animal can fix holes and bumps and a flying animal can kill off fungus and whatnot.

I’m adding a very odd idea that i had that i have no idea if it works- feedback on this. I thought that if we want something that will look like it’s “fake” then materials to fix the moon, copper, mercury, gold- even oil and water if we want, they can be animated into stars that will jump at Alice and explode on her. they should come in batches. just an odd thought.

To all of this I replied: 

All of this stuff is FANTASTIC. And, yeah, I should have been more careful in my choice of words. Anything hinting at advanced technology – simulator, holograms, etc – would suggest things that are very much out of place in Alice’s mind. You’re on the correct path with hallucinations and mechanical beasties that implement physical changes that alter Alice’s perception of reality. It’s more “smoke and mirrors” than “lasers and holograms.” 

The Gnat and Spider designs are great. Even though I hate flying enemies – I like the idea of these things forming a “cloud” that messes with Alice’s vision. For the Spiders I like the idea that they could weave webs of deception – imagine a wall of web onto which a hallucination is projected. Alice can destroy the web and the illusion with it. 

For the Fungai… The general concept and presentation is good. An element we can place in the environment to create toxic zones. Spores from it can cause hallucinations and disorientation. With regards to your comment about bringing “color to the moon” – this part I don’t get. Why? The Moon interior is separate from Denial. It has a style – Hatter Industries, mechanical, etc. Please leave it at that. 

Lastly, The Lobster is fun. Regarding the idea of them all serving different functions – I would suggest we focus on The Senses and assign each of these characters control over (the ability to manipulate) specific senses. Hearing, sight, etc. 

That last idea… I have no idea. ????

Let us know in the Comments below your thoughts on The Manipulators. What do you think of their function and their artistic design? We’ll discuss your feedback during this week’s live stream (more on that later in this post). 

Tea Time Wildlife

Jen sends along further exploration of the types of surreal creatures we might find floating around Wonderland.

I have … er, thoughts, about that teabag design… from having watched too many CS matches. Thankfully no 12-year-old kids will have control of these enemies in-game… or will they? (Note to self: Disaster Marketing idea #342,423 – how can we give 12-year-old kids control of the Tea Bag Enemies every time Alice dies in-game?)

She also submitted this pig… which…

(Note to self: Check how much of our budget goes to supplying hallucinogenics to our artists – reduce if necessary). 

Live Stream on Twitch

We will host a Live Stream on Twitch this week – the usual time. That’s 7PM PST on Wednesday. 

And we’ll discuss all the latest art, design, and business development on Alice: Asylum. Plus… 

Yan and I finally took a trip to the YiWu International Trade Market to source various products for Mysterious and Patreon. Among our main goals – to find a Snow Globe (or a suitable alternative). So, we’ll discuss the fruits of that search. 

If you want to see the trip to and from YiWu, I uploaded a travel vlog of it to my YouTube Channel. Hit THIS LINK if you want to watch that now. 

And hit THIS LINK if you want to head over to my Twitch Page and follow or register or whatever it is you do there. 

From Shanghai with Eeeee-wooooo,

-American

Dear Insane Children

Font Lord here, with just a teeny tiny reminder about next month’s print.
(And I definitely didn’t just post up the wrong monthly image 10 minutes ago and delete the post)

RINGMASTERS !!

Available to all at $75 and above who are charged in July.
(And yes, it’s also going to be available at the 3x$35 tier too)
Finally rounding off the triptych of Circus Posters.  Yay !!

Also, would you look at that on our monthly print schedule calendar.

Seems we have an empty spot in August coming up fast!
What do you think we should do?
Escher Alice perhaps?
Alice and the Snail?
Anything else you’ve seen?

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

One of the ideas we’re working on for enemies in Asylum is a type of machine called a Manipulator. They are Illusion Engines – capable of shapeshifting and scene building. And we’ll encounter them right at the start of the game in the Circus (Denial) Realm. 

Omri sent over some sketches (main images Above) for early designs to which I replied: 

Sorry to tell you but the design of the steampunk wheeled arm-whirling enemies in AMA… is among my Least Favorite of all enemy designs in all of the games. Why? 

First, I hate the idea of enemies or creatures with wheels. I prefer legs, flying, etc. The wheeled enemies in AMA were not from the core design team – they were done by some rogue artists at Rogue (rogue-ception). 

Second, I am not a huge fan of humanoid looking robot/enemies in Wonderland. So the top hat, the eyes… don’t really work for me. And the honk-honk horn nose… also not doing it for me. 

What I do like… the spider arms. Which has me thinking… something more akin to a spider – something that weaves a web of lies and deception. 

Perhaps a handful of multi-legged insect bots? A spider, a centipede, and a fly? All designed to help create an illusion (like flying, moving holographic projector type enemies)? 

We then got some ideas from Alex… 

To which I replied: 

I like the Spider/Cup thing but not the top hat part of that design. Can we try a couple of these without the hats? It makes them look goofy and not-at-all-scary. These things are supposed to be evil.

I like the *concept* of the hand (man = hand) but I am not a huge fan of the execution. Feels like there’s a version where the hand + spider design turns into something interesting. Maybe a direction to explore? 

Please, god, no, NO tread/wheel creatures. Make It Stop.

And treads + hat = No^No 

At the same time, the team is working on concepts for the Chaos Monsters… 

This would be the Chaos Powered (inspired?) “stuff” that’s taking over Wonderland. We previously wrote about how these creatures, which are basically made of fractal tentacles, will infect and control host creatures (friends and foes). 

I wrote these notes on the topic: 

My preference here … any of the designs with HEAVY emphasis on the tentacle aspect of the enemy design. The other elements confuse the message. 

 Imagine we develop a procedural engine (in-game) for the creation of tentacles branching out from “infected” enemies. Early on in the transformation the enemy is still clearly visible inside – and just sports a couple of tentacles popping out here and there. But the longer its allowed to transform… the more it becomes just a mass of tentacles. At some point the tentacles take over in locomotion – so that a Card Guard (as an example) is swept off his feet and carried around inside the mass of writhing tentacles. At this point, the thing becomes as much a threat to other Card Guards as it is to Alice. And it is able to consume (and grow from) anything it snatches up in its grasp. 

The idea here is that the faster Alice kills these things the better. Wait too long and a single Chaos Tentacle Beast can grow to consume everything in sight. 

And I think the tentacle beasty concepts provided by Omri (above) do a good job of capturing those ideas. In direct response to Omri’s concepts I wrote: 

This works. It’s a bit too orderly. Needs to be more fractal and Chaotic but it is in the right direction. It would be helped by smaller tentacles and tendrils growing in connection with the larger ones. 

 I like it! 🙂 

Dario is continuing his work on the interior of The Moon.

Good looking stuff! 

And Joey has updated the Alice model reference image based on your feedback. 

We’re going to send this to Roman (the 3D Modeler) to get him started on the 3D Model. 

Lots more art, design, and production going on. And we’ll have a Live Stream later in the week to cover everything. 

Also… we are making progress on Business Development – but I sadly can’t say more than that! 

From Shanghai with Tentacles, 

-American

Dear Insane Children

Font Lord here with a little bit of info that we just got from Patreon.

It seems they’re now going to offer Patrons the choice of paying for their tiers in the currency of their choice.
(As long as it’s  $, € or £ )

They say…

• We’ve enabled currency choice on your page: new patrons will now see your tiers priced in their preferred currency of $, € or £.
• Nothing changes for existing patrons – they don’t have to switch currencies unless they want to. If they would like to do this, they can edit their pledge in the Manage Memberships tab of their dashboard.

So, yay for choice I guess?   🙂
Should you encounter any issues or problems or bugs or anything with this system, pop it in a comment below and we can send feedback to Patreon if needed.

Speaking of choice.
Here’s the results of the poll for which images you like best that could make their way into our 2021 calendar we’re looking to make.
No real surprises here, although I thought Mushroom Head would do better  🙁
Ohhh and most of the choices in “Other” were for Flamingo as I forgot to include it in the survey like some kind of huge doofus !

And that’ll do it for me   🙂

Happy Dragon Boat Festival Weekend to you all !!

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

There’s lots going on behind the scenes these days but I’m prevented by those pesky NDAs from sharing specific details. Still, you know me, I’ll still try to provide you some hints at the sort of progress being made. Why? Because you’re making all of this possible! 

Without our Insane Children, we wouldn’t have the funding for a team a artists, producers, and designers required to bring together the kind of high quality pitch materials needed for this kind of endeavor. Your support and involvement is CRITICAL. I only wish I could give you greater visibility into exactly what’s going on… needless to say, it’s good stuff.

So, while I can’t say WHO this pitch is going to… I can say that we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of schedules and budgets (for pre-production, vertical slice, and main development). The main image (above) shows a resource schedule for Alice: Asylum – a peek into the guts of the sausage. 

Here’s another slide from the new deck we’re working on which illustrates a critical point that I think many of our online critics tend to miss. Merchandise and why it’s important. 

I’m not a huge fan of digital-only-DLC or online-only games. Because you purchase something and it only lasts for as long as that game remains playable or online. We had this experience with some of the online games built by Spicy Horse. And I’m still getting emails from players who put money into those games and are disappointing years later that the games are no longer online. 

For years now (going back to my time at EA between 1996 and 2000) I’ve advocated a Physical Merchandise revenue stream model for games. I was preaching this before we’d ever heard of “DLC” or its inherent issues. 

Anyway, I could go on for hours about the benefits and features of linking physical merch to games. But the point is that this is another feature of the pitch we’re making. And it also explains why I’ve leveraged Patreon and Mysterious to try and prove some of the thinking behind this model. 

My goal here is to avoid a bunch of digital-only DLC stuff. And to make the game successful on its own merits (single-player, narrative driven) plus tangible collectible items (toys, jewelry, art, etc). This isn’t just because it’s fun and we like all those physical goodies – but because we’ve got to give the Bean Counters a viable replacement for the revenue they’d want to create with digital DLC. 

Art, Design, and Story 

Lots of Biz Dev stuff happening – which is a big YAY – but we’re still cranking out pre-production Design Work as well. 

This image from Omri explores a new idea we’re playing around with for the Main Baddies in Alice: Asylum. Remember that in our story we’ve got an Epic Battle going on between Chaos and Order. With the Queen of Hearts on the side of Order. And some Mysterious-something on the side of Chaos. And we’re exploring how to represent Chaos in the world as enemies… 

I am LOVING these concepts Omri put together. And can imagine these in-game with proper procedural generated growth and movement… wow. 

Here are some notes from me: 

        I really prefer what you call “Naturalistic” and really dislike the Crystal  stuff. Crystals are a bit of a joke in the game industry. “Collect the crystal  shards to complete the puzzle,” is a trope so tired it fell asleep while  sleeping. Please, no. No crystals.

The Naturalist  images you share = LOVE. This goes directly to the notion of Young Alice as a  Little Naturalist. Chaos and its representation in Wonderland should be a  natural attraction to Alice’s curious mind. She should want to explore,  dissect, and understand what’s going on with The Chaos. So, yes, more of  that.

Now… keep in mind that The Chaos might be something  that’s able to take over and Transform all the creatures of Wonderland. Like the  Thing in the movie “The Thing” – a creature that copies and mimics its host. Or  perhaps like The Borg? 

Imagine a Card Guard being taken over by  mushrooms, fungus, insect legs, octopus tentacles (there’s  something in that – need to think about the relationship to The Queen of  Hearts), etc.

So… something to explore ASAP would be the  Wonderland creatures and enemies we’d normally fight being overtaken by The  Chaos (in the form of a fractal “mold” or “fungus” that turns them into a new  type of enemy).

Expect more Techo-Tentacles soon!

Oh, and tonight I am meeting with the 3D Artist who we’ll commission to make a High Detail Alice Model (13-year-old Alice from Asylum). If all goes well, I’ll be able to show you that model in about a month. Woo.

PS: A GIANT THANK YOU to Alex for his effort on the Biz Dev Decks being put together these days. He takes all of our ideas and information and condenses everything down to a really sharp and beautiful series of presentations. We are SUPER lucky to have someone like him building these decks for us. 

From Shanghai with Plans, 

-American