Alice: Madness Returns - Notes and Observations

JOHN P. DORAN – LEVEL DESIGNER/ TECHNICAL DESIGNER - http://johnpdoran.com

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

CHAPTER ONE – HOUNDSDITCH HOME

Start off in an orphanage, playing Alice in the real world this time around too.

Doctor appears to be doing Alice more harm than good. Level design in

orphanage on top floor is done such that areas open up into one another making the area appear larger than it really is and leading the player to continue path from room they sidetracked on.

Children seem to dislike Alice very much so and give backstory to the player without having to use a cutscene

Cat runs past Alice at the beginning of checkpoint. Draws player’s attention and guides player to next location, all other roads are blocked but tries to give illusion of living world

Give the player multiple ways to travel, but if he must backtrack give them the least amount of backtracking possible

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Follow the cat having it run off after you get near it has a very Alice In Wonderland feel to it, and Alice lets us know that.

Upon getting to the end of the area the place gets darker and spookier going into a cutscene.

Now we are going to a place where an Nurse Witless lives who apparently blackmails Alice

At the place with the pigeons the Nurse turns into a villain and then Alice falls down the hole into Wonderland in a gorgeous Matinee sequence.

CHAPTER ONE (CONT.) – VALE OF TEARS

In Wonderland, Alice is a glorified version of herself. Her hair is longer, she wears a better dress, and she is happy to talk to strange creatures

Her parents say she was a great jumper (from collectable memories ala Bioshock), so that goes into Wonderland

If you fail to make a jump, blocks move in order to let you get back up

There are plenty of collectables in this game to encourage exploring the areas created

We see a statue of Alice weeping down a waterfall, it is very apparent that this Wonderland is all in Alice’s head

Alice can at will change herself from being normal size and being small. Being small will give her hints about where to go next in the game as well as hints to treasures

After learning the basics of platforming, the water turns into blood and Alice gets her first weapon

Soon after we reach our first open clearning which means, tutorial battle. First time meeting the Insidious Ruin enemy. (Creepy ink baby thing)

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Often objects will move as you come up to them, (Trigger Volume) letting the player know which way the designer intended for them to travel

After traversing for a bit the player meets a character they met in the last game that tried to eat them, now she wants her to collect pig noses for her, giving you a pepper grinder to use as a weapon

Things around can be destroyed releasing teeth to collect (similar to the red orbs in God of War)

After leaving the room we meet the Bolterfly (like the dragonfly in Enslaved)

Pepper grinder is awesome, basically a machine gun

Alice’s tears change from blood into slime and become an enemy in the form of the Slithering Ruin

Moving platforms move to other treasures not on the

beaten path if you stay on them The once beautiful Wonderland changes before our eyes into a strange

and dark place, taken over by the darkness (probably done by using a post process volume changing the overall look of the place using a warmer palette)

Platforming in the next couple of areas usually has the player jump down to an area below and then work their way back up to where they were

It looks as if the Doctor’s attempts at changing Alice have been changing Wonderland.

Upon getting to an area, there are blocks that knock rocks over the previous area (to unstream the level I’m sure)

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CHAPTER ONE (CONT.) – HATTER’S DOMAIN

This is where we meet our new enemies the Madcaps. They wear teapots on their heads, and being destroyed tells the player visually when they are close to defeating them

Also first time meeting an enemy that has a shield in which you must wait for their guard to go down by them attacking you before you can make a large contribution to combat

See a skeleton of one of those enemies inside a mech of some sort. Foreshadowing?

Are told later by the game that when you see Violets you are going to be able to see things in when shrunk. Previously I was checking all over to see if I could find anything, it’d be best to tell the player at the beginning what cues to look for in the environment.

There are platforms that can only be seen while shrunk (like the scanner in Ghostbusters: The Videogame) Not advisable for the main path, but for collectables and other goodies I can see a purpose

New area = new outfit for Alice

Added new mechanic of vents where you are allowed to rotate around and then exit to reach higher areas.

With the shrinking ability the level is able to have half closed gates that you can squeeze into

I experienced a bug where the Vorpal Blade was no longer usable, will reset game and see if that fixes the problem.

Whenever Alice interacts with any object, a Matinee sequence occurs showing her exactly what happened because of it

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Upon destroying all of the enemies around her another door unlocks to the “Lost and Found”

The next addition to the game is in plates that you stand on that move a platform for a brief period of time.

We also introduce a new enemy that is a tea pot that has a weak spot which is the only place you can hurt it.

Tea is also falling down in this area acting like a glass that will kill you if you touch it

Game shows player preview of future area, making note of things that will be there when they return in terms of collectables.

That area is actually completely optional, so it makes sense that it should be shown to entice the player to visit it.

Take a slide down similar to the one earlier in the game (catch teeth as you’re going down)

Given a bomb that you can place and detonate to knock down broken walls, it is very easy to tell what can be broken because it is all red, actually most objects in the game you can interact with are red.

Show memory in front of a gate entices a player to look for a way to get there. Earlier games did this as well (Sonic in particular) but most times it is not easy to tell how to get there, here you just need to find a shrink hole

We then enter a new area where we learn that Alice’s house was basically begging to be set on fire due to all of the flammable things in their library; a spark could have done it.

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Told now that whenever Alice is low on health she may enter a type of “Hysteria” mode in which she cannot be harmed and does extra damage but can only last a limited time. Would have been nice to know earlier in the game

Hysteria mode is freaking awesome.

Finally meet the Mad Hatter and he is broken all to pieces (he’s apparently a machine) he will help you with your quest, but only if you help him first recover the rest of his body.

Given instructions on how to use something after you have to use it beforehand. Not the best way of doing things.

Neat, you can use your bombs to hold down your pressure plates. Can’t plug in headphones while playing the games, the game will

continue to use your speakers. Must reset, kinda annoying. Suffers from Portal 2’s problem of trying to find the one spot that can

be used to continue the game in that the game puts the player in a place where to continue you have to shoot a red clock to turn it green. This makes sense, but when the area it was designed for also uses those same colors it can be confusing and

irritating. Occasionally the game will have popping issues (the Main Menu

prominently in terms of Alice’s appearance) Without a player’s consent the game automatically took the player to

the next area, not a good idea in a game about exploring and with a % complete rate

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CHAPTER ONE (CONT.) – SMELLING & REGURGITATING

Audio and visual cues in this area are fantastic in letting the player know what is going on in the world. (The two people taking over and being in charge of the factory, that the people in the area are slaves) lets the player know what is going to come up in the future as well to keep them playing (similar to Bioshock’s advertisements which in turn were taken from Disneyland)

At a grate, if Alice shrunk her size she would be able to fit into a new area but area is just used to show player where something exists, should have just been glass or a smaller grate.

You next enter an area that is filled with lava and can kill you if you hit it (reskinned version of tea) later you revisit the same area after you filled it with cold air making everywhere that was unsafe now safe to

walk on. For some reason my

umbrella wasn’t able to be used so I ran away from an enemy into the next area, as such the music has never changed from the enemy music so the jumping puzzle is going on with the sound of the battle music

Breakable crates are great in the fact that it’s easy to tell if you’ve never been in an area before and are great for leading the player.

The game often wants to restrict the buttons that you are able to

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push at certain places, but it sometimes forgets to restore the ability when you should be able to.

Game seemed as if instead of spending time doing playtesting they instead took time to polish what they had in a similar vein to Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodline another one of my favorite games which I’m sure like this will have a cult following.

Collecting bottles gives you images of concept art, is that something that people put into games just to please artists or is there people who are not artists that enjoy looking at it as well?

After collecting the Mad Hatter’s arms, you return to the “Hub” of where he is getting ready to go to another area.

The other area is the area that I didn’t explore last time I was here, so I suppose the creators do give you another chance to pick up things

CHAPTER ONE (CONT.) – CRANKING UP & PRESSING DOWN

We are now inside this factory where there are tons of timing puzzles. It is really interesting how they put a combat scenario where tons of fist pistons are slamming down the entire time and enemies are coming at you avoiding them, but you can push them in to kill them

Failing machines can be climbed under using Alice’s shrink ability

Anytime a player quits the game and comes back he should have achieved very close to what he had before. If he changes levels he expects that the game would have saved it, but that’s not the case in this level

Some areas look quite similar to each other, if you are doing a Matinee to show the player where to go have some cues in that area to let the player know he’s going the right way

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Alice rebuilds the Hatter and then he drops her off into another area

The game makes it fairly obvious which way the player should be going by directing the camera

Black slime is added to damage the player if she comes into contact with it.

Hatter acts a lot like an ally in Uncharted 2 would open doors for you after you do for them.

We then see the two characters act as if there is a boss battle about to begin

But it breaks down defying expectations (or not enough time in development) and a movie begins showing Alice being drowned by tea, but in reality it brings the player back into reality.

CHAPTER TWO – REALITY

And Alice was apparently stuck in the River and wakes up back in the real world where the color palate reflects the dark and dreariness that Alice feels in that world.

Bad use of Trigger volumes let me see a character standing still before moving with his voice action

Still following a white cat, but we learn that Alice used to have a cat just like that

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Leads Alice into a brothel and knocks her unconscious leading her back into Wonderland while the building is set on fire (similar to how her home was set on fire which started this whole mess)

CHAPTER TWO (CONT.) – TUNDRAFUL

Alice lands in a beautiful way as usual. Perhaps

areas begin as Alice wishes they were and as she continues it becomes more and more twisted

Like

Disneyworld the different areas of the game change what things look like depending on what ‘land” that it is in (ex: trashcans at Disneyland, mouseholes here)

Makes some areas invisible if you are shrunk that doesn’t make any sense of gives the player any indication that it could – bad design

With the collection in the game, it seems a really long time between updating the count telling the player how many memories they have collected, if the game intends the player to find the missing ones they should have a good idea of where they need to be looking

As we go through this new area we see new fishpeople that when we get near move into the ground, possible new enemy?

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After we defeat the first round of enemies we see a Yeti-like creature come up a tree trunk and start blowing air out

Fish enemy is called an Ice Snark and you first fight him as soon as you get the Hobby Horse which is a new weapon that Alice receives in this area

Game reminds me to spend my teeth to buy things from the weapons menu. This would have been helpful if they told me this AT THE BEGINNING OF THE

GAME. Game shows that you got the Hobby Horse but won’t say how to use it Neat idea to create side areas that in turn loop around to the place

where you started from, that way you never have to have the player backtrack

Lazy? Just have Alice jump on a trampoline and fade to white to land her wherever you want!

Afterwards the player is brought to a slide that splits and joins up at different places making it so that you cannot get everything by riding it one time, not too nice to players that like to take their time and get everything in an environment

After a combat scenario the player is treated to their first “Radula Room” in which the player is asked a question and if they answer correctly they are able to get some paint for another health point

Area ahead has a path left and right and water in the middle, but in the water is a hidden moving platform that you can shrink under

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Once you make it to a ship, the game turns into a side-scrolling shooter where you attack sharks with cannons with a high score and everything till you reach an area that takes you back into the main game again

CHAPTER TWO (CONT.) – DELUDED DEPTHS

The ship crashes and we are told by our friend to go to the Carnival (similar to the ad of a carnival in the last reality sequence) and he gives us a ticket

New Area, new outfit for Alice

Alice can be frozen by the new fish enemy, dodge to escape it

First time we meet a new enemy without a special introduction for it, this character is a ghost that cannot be hurt until you hit it with its own bombs by shooting them

Created two paths the player could travel, one invisible and one normal, the invisible adds complexity for the sake of giving more rewards (a moving invisible platform when you are trying to hit the pig to intentionally make it harder)

As the player goes through this area he sees a village of sorts of fish people purely as an exploratory piece in which the second room is found (fighting for a period this time) and teeth and memories are collected

The game also fits enemies into the new locations taking the tear

babies and making it so they were jellyfish-like

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After some combat and platforming scenarios the player finds themselves outside of the theater they were sent to go to.

Upon getting to the show we meet a rather charismatic fellow and the game takes time to be fun and have the characters engage in some witty banter using a lot of different words often not said these days (“by the by”) telling the player in 3 pieces what they need to do to continue the quest.

When we get to the squid who is writing the script (who sounds like Fat Basterd from Austin Powers) wants to play hide and seek and we have to catch him 3 times.

Follow a linear path that’s blocked until you find him 3 times, not too difficult but it may provide the illusion that you aren’t just following a linear path

After you find him 3 times he tells you he’ll give the script to the one guy, but now you have to get singers

Conveniently in the next area you meet a singer, but his voice is out of tune, so you have to kill enemies to unlock tubes that let him know what the right notes are.

After you get the fish all of the parts of the music you then need to play DDR in order to teach him how to carry the tune

The Radula Rooms seem to be different each time you go in, probably to make use of the mechanics that they spend a lot of time on that weren’t shown too much in the regular game.

This time the room was a repeat of the sidescrolling shooter, and upon completion the game teleports you to the first room where you are able to pick up a rose piece (kind of breaks the suspension of disbelief that so far the game does so well keeping)

The water becomes more and more murky as the chapter continues After you collect all of the pieces for a poster you have to do a sliding

puzzle to put it back together. So annoying.

Now after facing him several times already we finally get a little matinee for the “Downed Sailor” but he now has an additional attack where he can go underground like the fish

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The Captain of the crew of Drowned Sailors begs you to release their souls because he needs his men, an excuse to have Alice fight more of them.

We are brought to a graveyard like area where going inside one of the coffins brings Alice to the bottom of the sea, very large fog with a glowing seahorse to light her way

Have to do some platforming and then after breaking a chest Alice saves one Sailor’s soul

Does a good job of starting off with an easy puzzle and then cranking up the difficulty in each different area

“Whoever destroys a soul destroys a world. There is much wisdom in that Alice.”

Next we meet the Colossal Ruin in which the normal ruin has combined with the church-train we saw earlier in the game

Found the last Radula Room of the chapter, it was another “Kill or be Killed” mission where you have to defeat all of the enemies in the room

And now pig noses can be invisible ramping up the difficulty to find them even more

CHAPTER THREE – PROLOGUE

Alice finds herself back in the real world riding a cart with her old Nanny who Alice tries to coerce into giving her some information on the fire that killed her family. The Nanny says she’ll take her to her old doctor who has her stuffed rabbit.

The real world areas become less and less impressive as the game goes on seeing repeated assets everywhere (the same as

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the fish town) it would have sufficed if they just changed the texture on the models ala Left 4 Dead

Mr. Radcliff’s house has a lot of Chinese influence upon it, which I’m sure the next area will as well (also, since it’s a Chinese studio I suppose it’ll make it easier for the developers to work with stuff they are familiar with)

We enter the building and apparently Radcliff thought that Alice had something to do with the fire as she is apparently a pyromaniac though the official report says the cat must have hit a candle starting the fire which Alice always gets upset about

When Alice wakes again she finds the house abandoned and as she exits we discover that Wonderland and the real world are combining with a rain of fire around it.

CHAPTER THREE (CONT.) – VALE OF DOOM

Reskinning to fit the area is in effect again, switches are now Hookah things which Alice uses to see things and hear remarks from Caterpillar.

Platforming puzzles mixed with combat in doses, exciting.

At the end of the area you are shown how to get to a memory, but you have to backtrack the entire level in order to get it, not very empowering to the player making them backtrack to get something as important as a memory

CHAPTER THREE (CONT.) – MYSTERIOUS EAST

Fitting with the Asian themed room of before the area is very Oriental in theme

You are forced to go into the “hidden rooms” now in order to continue the gameplay, I don’t know how I feel about optional areas turning into required later in the game

Earlier in the level there is a small ledge next to an area you need to destroy that you can stand on, later the same thing happens but they take the collision away, don’t change any notion of what can or

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can’t work depending on when it’s convenient for gameplay, we have to meet player expectations.

There is an area that is impossible for Alice to get to that is built in such a way that the player believes it is the correct path when in reality the player has to turn 180 degrees in order to see the next area.

Turns out that the path was the correct one, but they didn’t place a trigger volume so that I’d enable the second propeller until my second time around to the area

Clever placement of memory, when entering a main hall, move to the left and behind you you’ll find a destructible wall which behind it is a switch the switch lowers a wall that is ahead of you and when it rises it leads to the knowledge that the only lamp that was on at night was a night light for Alice, a reason she may feel the fire was her fault.

Invisible pig snout off the beaten path. Upon meeting the elder he makes you do one of the puzzles similar to

before with the poster. But first we have to find the pieces. You are forced to find a piece that exists only when you shrink down

which is used previously without telling the player what it was. Was this a ploy for replayability to not tell the player how to do something until their second time playing through?

Was nice that as soon as you got the last piece it automatically took you to the puzzle to minimize backtracking.

Please do not take control of the player’s camera while they are gliding as it is made difficult to travel while in that position and we’re trying to make it to often small areas.

Alice finds her way to a Mysterious Cave which in turn allows her enter a painting making the gameplay like Mario, nice aside.

Contains a walkable surface where certain letters are encased in fire and stepping on them will cause

damage. In this next area we are shown

where the player needs to get to as well as some key areas before we

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get there, shouldn’t the level be able to be played without having to be told exactly where to go?

Don’t spawn enemies to attack me while I’m gliding, players are usually only able to concentrate on either combat or platforming at a time.

Neat exit to the area involving the player using a switch to turn something and enter it and then when the switch gets turned off the area turns to reveal the continuing path.

Has a blue mushroom that leads to the next area. We can tell that it’s moving to another level, why not take the time to

make it all fit together? Begin by using the slide mechanics on China, seems a lot slower than

previous ones with it easy to die at the very end. Alice realizes that she didn’t start the fire, and it was the cat that showed

her the way to safety when the fire did happen. Another reuse of the music playing game in order to continue, allows you

to skip the sequence if you fail An area filled with slime will continuously spawn enemies no matter how

many you kill, would be nice to be told this fact before the encounter began as there is no precedent for it and I spent 10 minutes killing multitudes of these creatures.

Platforming some more, and now another poster puzzle Area becomes stranger as the level goes on (example: statues of women

are now statue of women with ant heads. So there is a frog that I need to wake up by hitting a gong... why can’t I

just shoot it? Mario levels do a good job of increasing the difficulty as the player enters

new ones After meeting with Caterpillar he becomes a butterfly and Alice returns to

the real world.

CHAPTER FOUR – PROLOGUE

Alice begins the chapter in prison and is let out told to go back to Doctor Bumby.

As soon as Alice leaves the door however she feels ill and we’re teleported somewhere else.

Next place is tilted downwards to show more of the area and bring an aura of unrealness

The area continues to change as it becomes infected with the “Red Queen”

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CHAPTER FOUR (CONT.) – CARDBRIDGE

Starting out with the same idea Wonderland being beautiful and I’m sure changing as it continues onwards.

Cards are now our platforms and everything has been reskinned to fit the area.

First memory mentions a person that someone in Alice’s family doesn’t like and doesn’t want over for tea again.

Music is much more calming and soothing in this area.

Funny aside is that the face cards are all Alice dressed up as them.

Cards moving via Matinee is a really cool effect, but it’s really easy for the player to get lost and not know where they are going or how to get there

CHAPTER FOUR (CONT.) – QUEENSLAND

In the area there are echos of things that happened there in the past as well as whispers such as “Stay away” which really add to the mood of the area

We meet the “executioner” which is apparently invincible which is good that Alice and the cat mention it because otherwise I would try to fight it.

After feeling you get away the executioner faces you and you have to run away from it with a fixed camera angle going towards him instead of where you need to go (ala the truck in Uncharted 2)

The area does a really good job at making sure that we believe the executioner is a scary creature.

After getting through some platforming we are given our first “chess” puzzle which plays exactly like Sync-Ball

I think someone really liked Psychonauts.

Camera for one scene travel to a point fade to black fade back in somewhere else then move

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to a point. Probably a good way to make it not as jarring when camera switches happen.

Jump through a long way then realize there is a booster underneath us to take us the rest.

Does a shooting the clock puzzle like before where you have to move somewhere to be able to shoot it, but malles

We later find out that someone intended to kill Alice’s family and in order to hide his crime set the house on fire.

Facing off with the executioner again Alice finds some cake that says “Eat Me” and she becomes huge, squashing him like a bug. Very empowering.

After this we enter the queen herself, destroying pieces of her heart to go even more into her

Radula rooms now can have sequences of Giant Alice. When we finally get to the Queen we see that she is in fact a part of

herself. We realize that in reality that Doctor Mumby is trying to make Alice forget

because he is the one that killed Alice’s family. I’m very much enjoying the story so far

Alice is taken to an insane asylum (prequel?)

CHAPTER FIVE – PROLOGUE

Alice begins this section in the asylum, bald, and sees a lot of gruesome stuff

We discover Tweedle Dee and Dweedle Dum are in fact based off of two idiots in the insane asylum.

Has a very Suckerpunch like feel to it, escape based off of hiding pain.

If something is supposed to be read, make sure that it comes into focus before Alice gets to it.

CHAPTER FIVE (CONT) – DOLLHOUSE

Same mechanics, different skin and new

outfit.

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Looks like Alice controlled going into Wonderland this time. Two new Doll enemies and once you reach the end of this new area it

seems you’re playing Super Monkey Ball with a baby doll’s head. Then randomly after a few levels of this it goes straight into Alice playing

again. Dolltown Cellar has a really bad puzzle at one point that doesn’t do a

good job of explaining things. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwqSgs2bomA around the 4:00 mark)

The part leading up to the fort is kinda buggy in the fact that it will create a checkpoint in a spot where you have to backtrack in order to continue if you die.

Alice finally figures out what the doctor did and confronts him saying she will stop at nothing to stop that train.

CHAPTER SIX – PROLOGUE

Alice confronts the doctor at a train station and dives into Wonderland

CHAPTER SIX (CONT.) – INFERNAL TRAIN

Alice breaks free from being a doll head and body and becomes her normal self.

She realizes that the doctor raped his sister, locked her door, and then murdered the rest of the family as she was a ‘tease”.

Turns out the Red Queen is her sister. Alice is able to beat the Doctor in Wonderland (first boss battle in the

game) and in real life (by pushing him infront of a train)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwqSgs2bomA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwqSgs2bomA

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Alice: Madness Returns - Notes and Observations

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