Dear Patrons, 

It’s been quite hectic around here since our last update. I’ve been in Thailand working to get my sailboat ready for the upcoming season and Pirate Jam 2018. 

Boat work and getting things done in Thailand both serve as constant reminders of the nature of chaos. A boat is chaos and entropy floating together inside a container of fiberglass, steel, lines, bolts, seals, valves, and wiring – all competing against the harsh elements of the sea. We constantly strive to bring order to the situation through planning, maintenance, and vigilance. 

But our best efforts to control chaos only serve to put in place the elements upon which chaos thrives – things in order naturally succumb to the passage of time. This is the realm of the Hindu goddess Kali. And now, after a series of chaotic days, I missed my chance to re-name my boat “Lulu” and have  decided instead on “Chaos” – “??????” (Thai: Kl?yukh) (Devanagari: ??? ???).

Speaking of Chaos… For Patrons who backed at higher levels we’re nearly finished with production of the silver Chaos Necklaces. They’re being produced in two sizes – a smaller one ostensibly for men and a larger one as originally presented. Once they’re in hand I’ll send out a quick survey to find out which one those Patrons want. And we’ll add them to the Mysterious shop for everyone else who wants one. 

Now, as we continue trying to put our plans for “Asylum” in order… 

Joey AND Sonny have new art for us! And our old friend Omri Koresh has signaled interest in joining the art team. I’ve added Omri as a new goal here on Patreon. Help spread the word! 

Now on to the latest from Joey…

November 28th

I did Hatter wearing suit and later, sth. happened destoried his place, he lost his suit and wearing his shirt, the shirt was also kind of dirty, I made it look like just been through a fire. There is an extra version of his dress, just came to my mind it would be intresting to have that china outfit, then when it was broken, there was flesh underneath. I used hatter to show this, maybe we can use this on small enemies on this stage.

Also I did his teapot castle, I rendered 2 images, we could pick one from them, there should be a destoried version, I will come up with that later. 

Tell me what do you think. 

I am working on his lab, should be done soon.

-Joey

And we have two new pieces from Sonny… 

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Once I’m back in Shanghai (this weekend) I’ll set up another live stream with Martin and we’ll talk about everything that’s going on. 

Also, let me know what art print you’d like to go out this month. Lots of great art to choose from. What’s your favorite? 

From Krabi, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

We’re back today with another art and story update. Joey’s sent along further studies of the Hatter’s domain and workshop interior.  

I’m a really big fan of worlds in which there are floating elements – like islands and castles in the sky. I’d like to have this feature prominently in the world design for the new Alice game. I can imagine a base domain of landscape above which there are other domains floating in the sky. Alice could travel to these by use of her umbrella (flying on updrafts). 

Lots of ideas floating around my head regarding the integration of alchemy into the narrative and game play. Hoping we’ll explore that topic more in future updates. 

Still waiting on the first bit of art from Sonny – so I’ll give him a poke to see what’s up. 

I’m traveling and away from Shanghai until the weekend… but do hope we can have a live stream on Sunday, 26th. Be sure to leave your comments below and we’ll address those during the next stream!

Speaking of Sonny… For Black Friday we’ll offer his “Mother” print for FREE with any purchase of $65 or more. After the promo the print will be removed from Mysterious and will never return. Promo runs from 11/23 at 11:30PM until 11/28 at 12:30AM. Grab your while you can!

—–

American,

Some quick rendering of hatter’s domain outside and his lab. I will start on detail if we all agree on them.

(I will add some more color to that teapot place to make it look more wonderland, maybe the floating rocks should have some pink or red trees on them among normal trees…)

Cheers,

Joey

Nov. 20th, 2017

Joey, 

Apologies for being so slow to reply. I have been traveling and the Internet here is slow/dead. I will make your payment ASAP. 

For the Hatter Domain… I think it’s a good start. Please try to keep the Guilin island/mountain floating in the sky theme. And think about there can be rivers and waterfalls made of tea flowing over the sides of those islands. 

For his workshop, I think it’s really great. One idea to make sure you include: Alchemy. You can put the alchemy symbols around on various bottles and tools. This is a very important element of Hatter’s story. In the game we’ll use alchemy ideas a lot. 

I look forward to seeing what you come up with next! 

Cheers, 

-a

Dear Patrons, 

Another round of images from Joey just arrived! She continues her work on Hatter’s domain and sketches for Hatter’s attire. These images are inspiring all sorts of story and drama in my mind. I can’t wait to explore these areas and re-visit these characters in-game! 

October 11, 2017

— 

American,

I did some quick design of Hatter’s place exterior, also did another version of hatter himself, with a coat like the original fairy tale.

For his place, the structure on the huge teapot is stone/brick castle instead of machine, but there should still be some gears, outside of the building and inside the teapot. I have 2 outshape of this one, one normal, the other tilt one, I feel it’s more intresting. The rendering is also one more normal, porcelain teapot and maybe the building on top is also made of china; the other is quite old, nasty, burnt style. Maybe his place used to be fine china, then something happend, Hatter got mad and burnt his place…

How do you think? Also which stage of emotion are we going to link to hatter’s place?

Cheers,

Joey

—

Joey, 

These look really cool. I have a couple of ideas… 

For the Hatter’s domain and castle… What you’ve done is really nice. I’d like to see you add a couple of smaller floating islands around the main island. Include a lot of green and beautiful garden areas as little floating islands connected to the main island – places where we might find Hatter having tea with his friends during the daytime. Since tea is coming from China you can also include a feeling of China – like you said, the castle is made from a clean and beautiful China and the area around can look like the mountains from Guilin in China. 

This idea and theme was hinted at in the trailer we did for Madness Returns. You can see from these screen grabs…

This will be how we first see Hatter’s domain – he might even be included in the Denial phase of the game. Then there’ll be some sort of accident or disaster which ruins his area of the game, destroys the beauty of this place, and disfigures Hatter. 

If we go with that story then I think it makes sense that we first see hatter in a nice coat like you’ve shown him. When Alice meets him we might also introduce his Alchemy Hat for the first time – some new creation he’s just finished. We’ll also see that he’s at work trying to master alchemy – turning things into gold or other precious elements. So you might think about an area which is clearly Hatter’s laboratory. 

I look forward to seeing what you come up with! 

Cheers, 

-American 

—

Also, our friend Jennifer D’aww sent along an image we’ll use to create test samples of acrylic pins for Alice: Asylum. Check out this cool little Mock Turtle! We’ll create a whole line of these featuring all your favorite characters – then we can add them to the Mysterious shop and turn them into Patron rewards! What do you think? 

As always, be sure to leave your feedback and questions in the comments below. We’ll respond during the next live stream on YouTube. Yay!

You did it! Unlocked our $2500 goal which adds another illustrator to the Alice: Asylum pre-production team. Yay! I’ve already emailed Sonny with thoughts on where he can get started – Wonderland characters! Expect to see new images of your favorite Wonderland characters like Dormouse and March Hare, Jabberwocky, Mock Turtle, The Carpenter, and more… 

Because art is so critical to this process I’ve created a new goal at $3500 which would add yet another illustrator to our team.

So far you’ve helped us unlock faster internet/VPN which improves our weekly live stream quality. And you’ve added another illustrator. Hitting the next goal and adding one more illustrator will help us visualize our pre-production design and narrative work more quickly. After that? 

I believe physical collector items – art, resin models, plush toys, pins, and the like – will be crucial to our crowdfunding campaign next year. Yes, we all want to contribute to making the next game a reality but it’s easier to attract support when there’s an immediate physical reward in addition to the long-term promise of a new game. 

That means we should start looking at 3D models of characters, 3D prints and casts of those models, and manufacturing of physical item samples. I expect our goals beyond $3500 to be closely connected with those efforts. 

What items beyond design, art, story, and rewards do you think are critical to telling our story and running a successful crowd funding campaign in 2018? 

Leave your thoughts in the comments below and we’ll discuss during next week’s live stream!

Dear Patrons, 

As we head into November we mark the 2nd month of pre-production on Asylum and unlock the first art print for upper tier Patrons. These will be signed and shipped this week and should arrive within 20 days. They’re printed on a high quality oil painting canvas and measure 48x100cm. They will make a stunning addition to your Alice collection! 

I’d like to know if everyone would be OK with my adding these to the Mysterious shop for sale. I don’t think these were marked as “exclusive” to Patreon, but I don’t want to upset anyone’s expectations. I’m thinking about pricing them at $100 as to match the level of commitment made by those who are backing here on Patreon. Thoughts? 

On the business development side of things the Asylum project continues to attract new and interesting attention from potential financiers and publishers. This is excellent news for the project overall and helps us move closer to making a 3rd game. Yay! 

We’ll discuss all this during our next stream…

And another live stream is scheduled for November 7th @ 5:30pm PST!

Hit THIS LINK to set a reminder, and watch the stream. 

Meanwhile, Joey and I continue fleshing out art while design ideas float up from the creative process we’re all taking part in. Glad to have you all along! 

Let me know in the comments below what you think about “young Hatter.” We’ll go through your comments during tomorrow’s stream.

Here’s the latest… 

November 4th, 2017

Joey, 

I think it would be good to see something from the Mad Hatter next. 

In the first two games his domain was quite interesting – a lot of machines, gears, steam, etc. I think we could show his domain like the “beginning” of all that… smaller, more simple, but still lots of gears, machines, levers, … like a factory. It would also be interesting to see him a little less mechanical. Maybe we can start to tell the story of how he became like he is in the next two games – in this game he starts more normal and then, because of the war and his experiments, he starts to become more like a machine. 

What do you think? 

American, 

I did some linework for hatter, do not want to change him too much… or shall we make him very different? Shall he also have something burnt? Maybe his dress has smoked stain or burnt edges…He is supposed to be ‘younger’ and not quite crazy, I give him some thin hair (not so obvious on line drawing), and arranged his belt in a more normal way, ah, also reduced the number of the belts. He should still be a whole person, I mean nothing mechanical on his body yet. Oh, is he still going to have green skin? or shall we try a blue-pale one?

So, how do you think? I am keeping the editing quite safe.

Dear Patrons,

I’m back from an adventure up the West Coast of the US. Yan and I drove from San Francisco to Seattle stopping at a variety of lovely towns along the way. It’s always good to get away from the hustle and bustle of Shanghai in order to stimulate the creative process. 

At Powell’s in Portland I managed to pick up two books by CG Jung which were influential to the first two Alice games – but I’d somehow managed to lose track of – “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious” and “Psychology and Alchemy.” And I was able to meet and talk with RJ Berg about narrative, design, production, and business. Finally I had some very interesting talks with a large platform/publisher in Seattle… but can’t say anything about that other than it helps us move a step closer to making “Alice: Asylum” a reality. Exciting stuff!

While I was away Joey sent along some new images and I’ve replied to her in the message below. 

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback and ideas.

We’ll host another live stream on YouTube later this week. Be sure to join us!

Click HERE to visit the live stream page and set a reminder.

—-

Oct 31st, 2017

Joey, 

This new version of the Cat is great. I think this gets very close to what the fans had in mind when they talked about putting some fur on him. 

For the Bargaining stage… I am still uncertain about where this will take place. I’ve been thinking about it daily and reading the feedback from fans but nothing really sticks just yet. It does seem the area should be one which clearly represents the pain and suffering taking place within Alice’s mind. It’s this pain she’s willing to bargain in order to be rid of. So we could imagine an area of Wonderland being punished/injured en masse by some force of nature or other widespread damaging effects. 

Imagine a place in Wonderland where it never stops raining – and the characters melt if they get wet. 

Or a place where the sun no longer shines – and all the (talking) plants are dying slowly from lack of sunlight.

These sorts of events could represent the pain Alice is suffering – and her mission to restore things to normal is an analog to her bargaining her way out of that pain. Ultimately, whatever the mission, it must fail. I’ll think about an area where this would make sense – and I’ll discuss with the fans. Then get back to you.

Cheers, 

-a