Anger
Contents
[hide]Anger > Bargaining
Enemies: Card Guard, Maze Creatures
Weapons: Vorpal Blade, Timeclock, Long Range Shooting
Upgrades: acquiring Long Range shooting
What player learns: At this point, the player knows all the mechanics.
Transition: Denial → Anger will be a Horror house ride that will open once and to revisit Denial there will be a separate station.
Concept
Anger is the fourth stage of grief (Slumber > Shock > Denial > Anger) Alice confronts and is represented by the Queen of Hearts who resides at the heart of the realm.
From here, the Queen of Hearts is attempting to regain control of Wonderland through use of anger, violence, and power.
She commands The Jabberwocky and uses him to terrorize and incinerate her foes.
The Queen of Hearts believes the Red Queen is responsible for the destruction of Wonderland and that Alice is one of her allies.
She agrees to spare Alice’s life on the condition Alice will help her defeat the Red Queen.
This necessitates Alice acquiring an Inner Compass (to navigate Wonderland) and meet with The Mad Hatter (who can weaponize/repair the Jabberwocky).
Story
Alice reaches the Realm of The Queen of Hearts through the Haunted House from The Circus Realm. She travels from Denial to Anger.
Alice is filled with Anger and must direct that emotion at someone or something. Anger at the destruction of Wonderland and the loss of her sanctuary. Anger at Change (at Chaos). This realm offers Alice (and player) the first chance to really unleash Anger and violence.
Upon arrival in the realm, Alice discovers Chess Piece Soldiers engaged in a battle against the Card Guard Soldiers of the Queen of Hearts. Chess Soldier Commander explains that the Queen's Castle remains impenetrable and that her Card Guard Army appears to be infinite. It's a standoff in which they cannot win but must continue lest they lose.
Alice is tasked with (self assigns herself a task of) breaching the castle and confronting (killing?) the Queen. That task breaks down into discrete chunks:
- Navigate the outer realm. Sneak under/over the castle wall (mote?).
- Navigate the inner realm. Through the hedge maze and surrounding buildings.
- Breach the castle wall. Sneak through dungeon levels into the castle interior.
- Navigate to the Throne Room. Sneak, fight, and infiltrate.
- Confront the Queen of Hearts.
- Queen of Hearts Boss Battle. Alice loses.
At the end of the stage, Alice will be captured. The Queen of Hearts will keep the White Rabbit hostage until Alice completes the task she gives her. Alice must first acquire The Inner Compass, which will guide her across the wastelands to her goal (Queensland). The Queen of Hearts knows this item is with the Mad Hatter and sends Alice there to retrieve it. She gives Alice a gift and commands Alice give this to Hatter. Asked if it will kill him - “No, it will ensure he lives forever, even if he’s blown to bits like our Wonderland…
Story Notes
The theme of Anger must be reinforced throughout this area. Alice's actions won't always make sense - driven by anger, she's unable to think clearly or logically. Weave some of the following ideas into her movements, actions, and story...
Senseless killing: Disregard for "sides" in the battle so that Alice kills Chess Pieces (supposed allies) and Card Guards with equal impunity.
Meaningless sacrifice: Sent on a mission to save a Chess Piece from the dungeon - find a way to fail at that mission through lack of concern.
Defeat through Anger: Alice needs to loss the fight against the Queen in this round.
Anger inducing elements: How to make Player feel the emotion this level is meant to represent without giving up on the game? For example:A cannon on a castle wall which lobs shots at Alice throughout the level... increases player's feeling of anger as the level progresses.
Blind Fury: Find a way to represent anger as a blinding force - how to obscure Alice's view of the world so that critical elements are ignored? But in a way that Player willingly makes sacrifices those elements for some perceived benefit?
Heart pounding, Adrenaline rushing, Shaking, Lack of control... All elements of the Flight or Fight (Anger) response. How to capture these concepts in Alice's actions, dialog, and responses?
Gameplay
Puzzle work, slash and collect things.
Locations
Concepts pending. Castle of hearts, Croquet Grounds, Courthouse, Royal Forest, Optional, A Graveyard.
Dear mister McGee, dear insane children,
First of all, I'm french and english isn't my native language. I apologize in advance for the few mistakes you will read in this message.
I've read the "An audience with the queen (of anger) post on patreon, and wrote a scenario who could be used to create something.
As she arrive in the Queen of Hearts (QoH) domain, Alice see a battle between Chess Soldiers (CS) and Queen's Soldiers (QS). The situation is desesperate, but Alice gathers together some isolated CS, use them successfully for defeat the rest of the QS, and saves the day.
The Knave of Hearts (KoH) has been captured and is helds in hostage by the CP since several battle. He claims that he now realize how destructive were the QoH's actions, that he didn't knew everything about the destruction caused by the QoH, and wants to help CS. They don't trust him, but Alice, now realizing her denial was a bad thing, persuade them to take action even more. She vouch for the KoH, and the CS places here as a general, for her victory before. Alice is already quite angry toward the QoH, and against herself for having been in denial.
The troup, constitued by the CS, Alice and the Knave, are moving towards the QoH domain. The KoH act as a counsellor for Alice, and helps her to win some short battles by exploiting breaches and the maze, so they can surrounder and cut off retrait to QS, and maybe destroy some parts of the machine or some of her alimentation source.
Exhilirated by the victory, and with the satisfaction of an anger who can flow toward ennemies, Alice trusts the KoH more and more. Then, the KoH will give bad advices, in order to lead to victories who will necessite huge sacrifices. The player must tell himself "There is no sense, it's useless, we could act different and better, I see that". It's always victory, but Alice is losing something, some pieces, some chess pieces, some CS.
After one of these battle, the CS starts to discuss Alice actions, and KoH strategy. Alice will make a military speach : "remember why you are fighting, we must act, be brave, it's for the Wonderland, think about the sacrifice we already made and who'll be useless if we give up now" etc. It works only until the end of the next battle who's also catastrophic.
Alice will then redirect her anger toward the CS. She will act with cruelly by physically hurting a CS already hitten, insulting him of "incompetent" and "idiot" for having been hurted despite of a briliant military plan who leads them to victory. When she'll see the CS are less and less, she will enrage and stabs an already dead corpse. She will make another speach, far more violent, insulting the army for being "coward", "a bunch of traitor", "ungrateful toward me, who leaded you to victories you coundn't had dreamed alone".
Starting that, it will be possible to hurt QS and CS indistinctively in battle.
An assassination attempt will be commited, from some CS toward the KoH. Alice will enrage, her vision will be blured, and the CS will take the apparence of QS, because nothing differ CS of QS for her anymore. The logic is "The KoH is an ally who help me to reach my goal, they tried to murder him, so they are ennemies".
Once the CS defeated of running away, the KoH will reveal his plan, guarded by fresh QS who just arrived. He thinks Alice will be in distress after realizing how easily she was fooled. But of course, the anger is the main emotion, so Alice turned into a raging beast even more and so a new battle starts, easily won.
We must distill some clues of the KoH's betrayal all along. One of them could be the following sentence : "Tell the Queen this masquerade will soon be over !", to QS running away from an early battle. Everyone shall tell "The masquerade is the violence of the QoH, and what she hidden to him". But it will his own masquerade toward Alice and the CS.
I hope my ideas will be usefull, we can stay in touch for more information or precisions if they're needed.
Sincerely yours,
Koukin