How Alice: Madness Returns Found New Life on the Internet Long After the Departure of Its Creator
If Alice: Madness Returns was dead on arrival, that would at least be aesthetically consistent.
The 2011 sequel to American McGee’s Alice went even deeper into Alice in Wonderland’s red guts than the first game, pulling out the most nightmarish aspects of the Victorian children’s story and tying their shadows into a neat action-adventure. But it suffered from abysmal launch sales, with reviewers and fans both being disappointed by what they felt were rough controls and level design.
Still, game designer American McGee wasn’t giving up.
McGee, who created the series after being fired by id Software, hoped to gather enough community support for a follow-up, and the most diehard Alice believers gave it to him in spades. But after a decade of this cutting fan pressure, publisher EA finally made a decision in 2023: there would be no more Alice games. They blamed the “analysis of the IP” and market conditions.
Was it all over? Would Alice have to lie facedown in the graveyard once and for all? Not exactly. Alice: Madness Returns doesn’t just live, it thrives.
“Even though EA was going to let Alice die,” says 33-year-old Twitch streamer Foxfire47, who has been a fan of the series since the first game released in 2000, “the fans were absolutely not.”
She credits Madness Returns’ lively online fanbase to McGee himself. He began working on a proposal for a potential follow-up, Alice: Asylum, in 2017, and encouraged fans to contact EA directly to show their support. His now retired Patreon contains all the other ways he incentivized fans to deepen their obsession, like referring to the fandom as “Insane Children” and eventually posting an Alice: Asylum design bible bursting with art.
His otherworldly design is at least one reason why fans could never truly abandon Madness Returns, or the Alice series in general. They are a gorgeous testament to the fact that anyone can survive the worst thing that’s ever happened to them.
Friendships and bonds
Foxfire47 discovered Madness Returns’ online fan base through McGee’s Patreon in 2018. She remembers feeling McGee’s excitement for Asylum bleeding into her preexisting enthusiasm for the series, and it did the same for everyone she met over Patreon and Discord.
“Friendships and bonds were made through Alice: Asylum,” Foxfire47 says.
When EA ultimately passed on the project, they were also rejecting an entire community that had put years and money into materializing a shared dream. But McGee had trained his fans to become personally invested, and an IP issue seemed small in the face of their dedication.
“After [EA rejected Asylum],” Foxfire47 says, “I feel that, as fans for Alice, we wanted to keep the spirit of the games alive. With the camaraderie of this community, we are always going to show our love for these games.”
The community now sustains Madness Returns through YouTube videos with millions of views, pouty TikTok fancams with hundreds of thousands of likes, detailed cosplay, tattoos, and other tangible methods of worship. All of this online word-of-mouth has helped Alice fans succeed in an unprecedented goal. They are actively collecting new fans for an abandoned, 24-year-old franchise telling the strange horror story of an orphan teenager, Alice, who retreats into an hallucinated Wonderland.
I feel that, as fans for Alice, we wanted to keep the spirit of the games alive
“I bought Alice: Madness Returns, and I’m playing the first one for the first time because of your cosplay!” one commenter recently told popular TikTok cosplayer Jessilyn Cupcake. In recent years, she’s made and shared several Alice cosplays with her eager followers, including Alice’s ultramarine tea dress and the yowling Hobby Horse hammer from Madness Returns. She first found Madness Returns in 2011, telling IGN that she “fell in love immediately.”
“It still feels modern and a fresh take despite being 15 years old,” Jessilyn says. “I think [its] hack-and-slash-style gameplay with multiple weapons, costumes, and abilities is one of the best examples in a game, ever.”
The game is an intoxicating blend of deadly and delicate, much like its most famous weapon, the lace-patterned Vorpal Blade – a chef’s knife for short-range combat. In Madness Returns, traumatized 19-year-old Alice must take on the child sex trafficker and psychiatrist Dr. Bumby, who tries to trick her into madness in order to commodify her body. But Alice learns to wield her fragile power against any abomination.
Alice’s ability to work through her pain and tackle any problem, from baby dolls that vomit to dangerous men, is part of her underdog appeal. And McGee accessorizes Alice’s hypnotic visions with touches like the creamy, white bow behind her bloodspattered apron, and the crystal-blue butterflies in the misty, tree-covered Vale of Tears.
Though Madness Returns the game has been out for years, the most popular way for fans to publicly join together is by looking at the tiniest game details through a magnifying glass. On TikTok, a scene shows Alice hallucinates having her skull drilled open at the corrupt Rutledge Asylum. The camera lingers on swollen leeches in jars. Alice looks dazed in slow-motion, with makeup staining her skin like a bruise, and moved viewers supply the video with 43,000 likes.
“SAVE ALICE ASYLUM PETITION,” says the most popular comment.
Madness Returns YouTube videos likewise prioritize analysis of the game’s visuals and story. One 51-minute video by video essayist Boulder Punch spends almost half of its runtime on series “highlights,” praising its surreal platforming and aching orchestral score.
YouTuber BlackRose was among those captivated by its “beautiful, grungy artwork” when she recorded her first YouTube episode with it in 2023, leading her to recommend it to her 111,000 followers.
“I was immediately hooked,” she tells IGN. “One particular part of the game that sticks with me vividly was when Alice became a giant after eating [enchanted Eat Me cake in] Queensland. I had loads of fun becoming big and terrorizing all the enemy card guards while I laughed maniacally for having so much power.”
Master of the macabre
“The art direction of the two Alice games are definitely what struck me the most [about them] — that dark, gothic style that blends objects of childhood with violence and the macabre,” says Maria, who runs the horror gaming YouTube channel eurothug4000.
McGee’s defunct Shanghai-based games studio, Spicy Horse, specialized in the unique style that gave Alice life. Aside from the Alice series, the developer also (somewhat unpopularly) turned several Brothers Grimm stories into platformers, while padding them with intriguing, cartoonish gore. But American McGee’s: Alice is what truly established Spicy Horse as a purveyor of cute brooding. Madness Returns’ art director Ken Wong was certainly inspired by it.
After Wong created Alice fanart in 2000, McGee took notice, and the two worked on designs together for several years. And on Madness Returns, “we saw an opportunity with the visuals to create something that was violent and horrific, yet also beautiful and full of imagination,” Wong says. “Wonderland is such an amazing setting.”
“I’m biased as the art director,” Wong continues. “But in 2024, I think it’s worth playing Madness Returns to experience a real visual feast. We were pushed to unleash our imaginations and explore some really dark places, and I think the game we created has some of the most beautiful environments and some of the most f’ed up characters I’ve ever seen in a game.”
@leah___lbbh But recovering the truth is worth the suffering. #SeeHerGreatness #alicemadnessreturns #alice #madnessreturns #fyp #SeeHerGreatness #fyp #fyp #fyp ♬ Alice Madness Returns – °•💘💌 𝒜𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓎𝒶𝒽 💌💘•°
Though the content of its story suggests defiance of its lineage, Madness Returns nonetheless shares its core with Alice in Wonderland, the idea that being a girl in an adult environment feels surreal. Because of this, actress Susie Brann, who voiced Alice in both games, tells IGN over email that she “wanted to bring to life the Alice [she’d] read about as a child.”
“I saw her as frank, polite, well brought up, curious, honest and adventurous,” says Brann. “I was aware that there was a great disparity between the innocence and truthfulness of Alice and the horror that was going on around her. But being aware that she had experienced real horror in the loss of her parents in such a horrific way, the games could be seen as an outworking of what was going on in her mind. Maybe bringing some form of closure, if not healing, to her mind.”
The original Alice in Wonderland provides a roadmap to children hoping to detangle the bizarre world of grown-ups. Madness Returns has, in turn, become a cornerstone guide for women who’ve learned to become distrustful of the white rabbit that led them to it. Fans online gush about the way Madness Returns handles trauma, which is, to this day, uncommonly nonjudgmental and empowering.While the villainous Bumby forces Madness Returns’ Alice to suffer from gendered grief, she never allows it to infect all of who she is. She’s more of a goth role model than a tragic hero, and in fans’ appreciation of her, she’s been able to join Alice in Wonderland as a fairytale classic.
Some fans have even grown up with Madness Returns the way other children, for more than a century, have had Alice in Wonderland read to them at bedtime. That was the case for twenty-two-year-old Johnnie, whose mom had been playing Alice games since before they were born. They first played it themselves when they were only five years old.
I’m biased as the art director, but in 2024, I think it’s worth playing Madness Returns to experience a real visual feast
These days, Johnnie appreciates how “[Alice] isn’t sexualized, demonized, or saved by a man,” they say. “All of her healing is done on her own, and I’ve always loved and appreciated that. […] Alice as a series, I believe, sparked a lot of discussion around trauma, psychosis, and mental health and provided that safe space for those who have suffered too without being painted as a villain.”
Twenty-three-year-old Brynlee Daigle agrees. She’s loved Madness Returns since begging her mom to buy it in 2012. Now, she discusses it with friends on Discord and does Alice roleplay on Tumblr. “One aspect of the game that still sticks with me is the important message about mental health, that no matter if you’re disabled, or severely traumatized, you can overcome any obstacle in your way.”
“It’s why I have the [American McGee’s Alice] Jabberwocky [boss] battle tattooed on my thigh,” she continues. “It’s there to remind me I can always defeat my inner demons.”
A community lives on without its original creator
Though he’s helped Madness Returns sprout a loyal and hopeful community, McGee himself might prefer to let Alice’s memory fade, like ink. In an email to IGN, a representative for McGee declined a request for comment, instead citing a recent YouTube video as McGee’s “final word on the matter” (after that, McGee acknowledged the “intensity of Alice fans” in relation to this article on Twitter). In the video, McGee describes being “emotionally, quite destroyed” after EA rejected his community-backed proposal for a third game.
Though McGee once welcomed fans’ ardor while recruiting support for his Patreon, EA’s rejection has understandably cut down his patience for it. He currently treats fans’ eagerness like he would a slack-jawed Frankenstein – a creation that could never meet his wants and needs.
“Alice fans tend to have difficulty reading what I am saying when it comes to how much I DO NOT want to make games anymore,” he wrote on Twitter on April 24.
Fans have learned to cope with his cold shoulder. Most of the meaning they derive from Madness Returns is personal anyway.
“Many of the active fans I’ve seen online are women,” says Maria, “and American McGee’s Alice goes through a lot as a young woman growing up in a world working against her.”
“I think every woman can relate to some aspect of [Alice] in a way,” she continues, “that feeling of something taken from them, that feeling of not seeming like you’re in control […] because you are a woman.” So fans are grateful for what already exists. “If there’s one thing I want people to take away from playing [Madness Returns],” says Jessilyn, “is that working through trauma — no matter how hard or stupid it is — can be worth it.”
“If something is true, it’s true for all time,” Brann says. “If the game resonates with people and helps them work through and leave behind some of their turmoil, understanding themselves more and what they’ve been through, that’s got to be a good thing.”
Ashley Bardhan is a freelance writer at IGN
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