15 years and a nasty IP war with EA can no longer hold back my favorite game after creator decides to turn characters into bunnies for spiritual successor: "Very happy with this development"

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Alice: Madness Returns returns!

An illustration shows a plush rabbit in a blue dress and white apron reading a leather bound book
(Image credit: Mysterious)

Alice managed to endure a cruel orphanage and an even more vicious asylum, but she couldn't survive an IP dispute between creator American McGee and publisher EA that put her morbid fairytale series in the ground… but maybe it only looked dead. 15 years after sequel Alice: Madness Returns came out and three years after his proposal for a third game based on Alice in Wonderland was rejected, McGee has announced a spiritual successor.

All he has to do is turn every caterpillar, Mad Hatter, and Queen of Hearts into a rabbit. Since McGee cofounded the stuffed bunny brand Plushie Dreadfuls with his wife Zhang Yan in 2015, this is actually a simple case of metamorphosis.

But, you know, eventually you have to dig a new rabbit hole. McGee continues to say in his December video that, "fortunately, we have managed to bring Wonderland into Plushie Dreadfuls. Actually, it's the other way around. The story I'm working on now has the universe of Plushie Dreadfuls living inside of Wonderland." He says a demo is on the way from an unnamed outsource developer.

He's also been posting promising updates from his family's boat, saying in a January 11 post that, "This morning I hit on a concept to link this story properly with the ending of Madness Returns but in a way that keeps it firmly in 'spiritual successor' territory – without needing to worry about incurring the wrath of certain corporations. It's logical, interesting, and it works."

"Very happy with this development as I've already sketched out large chunks for the middle and ending – along with the general theme/message," McGee adds. "So this provides a powerful start that Alice fans will love while also creating a solid frame of reference for the Plushie Dreadfuls universe."

I'm happily losing my mind over this. I've never come across another game that presents its lunatic protagonist with as much pretty whimsy as 2011's Alice: Madness Returns, and I love to relate to her. Since I'm also writing this with my Plushie Dreadful (I named her Francine) gazing over my shoulder with her red button eye, I'm also fully prepared to enter a world of mad rabbits.

I want to call this incredible action game with a harrowing story, bloodthirsty combat, and a psychedelic fantasy world my favorite game – but it doesn’t actually exist.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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