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Spicy Horse's Big Head Bash gallops out of beta, launches on Kongregate
After putting out Alice: Madness Returns last year, American McGee's Spicy Horse studio has been working on Big Head Bash, a multiplayer shooter set in a toy store universe. It's been in beta for a pretty long time, but now you can play it all official-like.Spicy Horse describes the game as "a free to play title combining heated PvP death match battles and collectable elements that will feature licensed goods from popular comics, music, movies and even alternative fashion." You can play Big Head Bash for free right now on Kongregate, along with the 100,000 other individuals who have taken it for a test run.
Amazon's vorpal sword cuts $20 off Alice: Madness Returns
As if it'd taken a swig from a bottle labeled "Drink Me," the price tag on Alice: Madness Returns has diminished in size at Amazon. This week only, the retailer is offering American McGee's second excursion into Wonderland for $20 off, making it $40 on PS3 and 360 and $30 on PC. The deal is available only "while supplies last," and joins similar week-long discounts on Brink and The Witcher 2 -- which is also a fantasy game, but features far fewer flying pig snouts.
Alice: Madness Returns Review: Madness over method
Crazy is not as easy as it looks. If you want to create a world of nightmarish whimsy like that in Alice: Madness Returns, it takes more than just throwing random bloody bits into a blender and spewing it all over the walls. You need careful planning; a formula of producing unease that will affect the player. When Madness Returns is at the top of its formula, it is a fascinatingly dark and grotesque psychological tale. Unfortunately, the game's greatest strength tends to be impeded by gameplay that doesn't feel so much mad as obsessive-compulsive.%Gallery-118730%
Alice: Madness Returns launch trailer is comparatively sane
Sure, the launch trailer for Alice: Madness Returns posted after the break features some genuinely upsetting imagery, discussion on how Wonderland is actually Hell, and murder -- but at least nobody rips their own face off. We're actually going to chalk that up as a victory for sanity.
Alice: Madness Returns preview: Pretty weird
Ten years after the original American McGee's Alice debuted -- ten years! -- its sequel is nearly here. With its June 14 launch just over a month away, I accepted an invitation to dive into its fractured Wonderland and play through the first of its five chapters. Although a decade has passed, it felt like I'd never left. While the core game design hasn't changed much -- platforming interspersed with combat -- Alice: Madness Returns is harnessing today's tech to convey a visual spectacle that's closer to McGee's original concepts than the first game could get at the time. It's also capitalizing on some new design ideas dreamt up by its imaginative designers at Spicy Horse.%Gallery-123547%
Spicy Horse receives $3M in funding, working with PopCap
American McGee's Shanghai-based Spicy Horse studio has secured $3 million in investment and is currently working on a project with PopCap Games' Shanghai studio. Gamasutra reports that Spicy Horse, which has finished production of Alice: Madness Returns for EA, will focus on "3D social, online games" going forward. McGee detailed some of this for us in an interview a couple months back. McGee says that Spicy Horse's PopCap collaboration will be a freemium multiplayer title that will initially launch in Asia. A PopCap representative told Joystiq that the information is accurate, but the company is "not providing additional details at this early stage." McGee said the investment will allow the company to execute a two-year plan and bring five games to market. PopCap Games recently acquired ZipZapPlay, who should have at least one new Facebook game out by year's end. PopCap expects to have "four or five" titles on the social networking platform by the end of 2011. The company already has Bejeweled Blitz, Zuma Blitz and ZZP's Baking Life.
McGee: Alice sequel to include original game as DLC bonus
Alice: Madness Returns will include the original Alice, according to Spicy Horse head American McGee. Speaking to CVG, McGee said, "A person who's purchased Madness Returns gets a download code and is able to bring Alice 1 onto their console and play through the entire original game alongside playing Madness Returns." Additionally, McGee teased that the Alice sequel would see plenty of DLC ... dresses, which "come with special abilities and enhance how you play through the game." Curiouser and curiouser, an EA representative told Joystiq, "Unfortunately, we do not have information in regards to Alice: Madness Returns including the original Alice game." Either way, Alice: Madness Returns is slated for June 14 ... unless it's not. Madness, right?
American McGee's Spicy Horse to focus on free-to-play games after Alice: Madness Returns
More than ten years after overseeing Alice with now-defunct developer Rogue Entertainment, American McGee is wrapping up a sequel with his Shanghai-based company, Spicy Horse. "This will be the first ever console triple-A game that's been developed from beginning to end in China, for the Western market," McGee told Joystiq during an EA event last Tuesday. "There's been a lot of stuff that's been outsourced, or various pieces of it have been made there, but in terms of production process we had to invent a lot of what we were doing to get this game made there." Spicy Horse was restructured to handle development of Alice: Madness Returns, and will restructure again once it launches the action game in June. "Well, we don't see that the future for us is in triple-A console games," McGee said. "We actually are trying to make games that are online, free-to-play, 3D advanced casual games, so as we finish this we're going to transition the company back to where we were intending to be when we finished Grimm." Spicy Horse was on track to follow up Grimm -- its fantasy-themed episodic series for games portal Gametap -- with more casual fare, but was temporarily derailed by an irresistible offer from EA instead. "So, we restructured for two years, we built the game, we did a great job, we're gonna ship it on time, on schedule, we never had a crunch and it's been really awesome. But now, it's back to what our belief is in terms of where things are going, so it's going to be all about free-to-play, 3D games for Asia." McGee claims that half of the development team has already completed work on Alice: Madness Returns, with ten to fifteen people doing "last-minute cleanup" -- of a project that has gone almost suspiciously (in this industry) according to plan. "I mean, we never had a freakout moment, we never had a crunch, we never had to work on a weekend and, in fact, we were always running ahead of milestones, so we would even give extra days off when the sky was blue, or something like that," he said. "So, it was a really pleasant development experience." Since Spicy Horse is set on transforming its production process once again, it's currently unsure about what would happen if EA asked for another Alice sequel. "That's a question to ask them. But it might take them another ten years to figure it out," McGee joked.%Gallery-118730%
Alice: Madness Returns gameplay trailer is no tea party
Nothing says "Hey, it's Monday!" like murderous teapots and bloodthirsty playing cards. It's fortunate, then, that this first gameplay trailer for Alice: Madness Returns has them -- and more! -- in droves. Watch it, then learn more about the game tomorrow morning in our new preview.
Metaphors: Alice stabs one-eyed monster in latest trailer
Lewis Carroll's seminal Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is certainly packed with metaphors, but we think none so explicit as this Alice: Madness Returns clip that has the heroine cutting up the Mad Hatter's one-eyed monster.
'Alice: Madness Returns' revealed [update: new screens, video]
Twitter account @thewhiterabbit is teasing news related to "the mad world of Alice," a note that EA's own Twitter account relayed. This is about 100 percent likely to be the announcement of Alice: Madness Returns, the sequel to American McGee's Alice. For one thing, the background of the Twitter page includes the "alicemadnessreturns.com" URL, which currently redirects to EA.com/alice. "Alice: Madness Returns" was trademarked earlier this year by EA, and an Alice sequel was announced way back at DICE 2009, followed that year by an "unofficial" Alice-related video produced by someone with ties to developer Spicy Horse. EA is holding a press event in about ten minutes to announce several games, so we'll find out soon enough! Unless, like the White Rabbit, EA is late. Update: It's official, and the game is coming in 2011 for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Catch the terrifying teaser after the break, and the press release here. %Gallery-97858%
'Alice: Madness Returns' trademarked by EA
Electronic Arts has submitted a trademark application for "Alice: Madness Returns," a possible name for the previously announced sequel to American McGee's Alice. Beyond an "unofficial" teaser video for the sequel released in late 2009, details on the project have been slimmer than the Queen of Hearts' soldiers. We've contacted EA for info on what's down the rabbit hole.
American McGee's Little Red Riding Hood looks pretty Grimm
click here for full version Legendary game developer American McGee has posted concept for the Little Red Riding Hood game he's planning to pitch to publishers at GDC 2010 next week -- and wow, Little Red has never looked quite so badass. The art, put together by a few artists at the Spicy Horse Games studio, features a white-haired little girl embedding an axe (almost bigger than she is) in a demonic wolf's skull. McGee probably has a pitch of his own all set up, but we look at a pic like that and can't help but think, "My, what complicated weapon combos you must have." All the better to get published with, we suppose. We'll be at GDC en masse next week, so we'll do our best to corner Mr. McGee and see if he willing to tell us any more about this not-simply-fractured-but-actually-mauled fairytale. If this is what the little girl looks like, just wait until we see the Hunter. [via GSW]
Alice 2 'teaser' not officially sanctioned
On Monday, we brought you an awfully official-looking teaser trailer for a follow-up to American McGee's Alice, which was announced in February. Now, via his blog, McGee is debunking the cool stop-motion clip, saying, "I wanted to clear up any confusion ... it was unofficial, and does not represent any of the final art direction or story elements in Alice 2." It's worth noting that when we attempted to verify the clip's authenticity on Monday, we tracked the site (the now-missing www.returnofalice.com) back to American McGee, so the confusion is pretty understandable. The "fan" that created the video, Troy Morgan, is an accomplished artist who has worked with the developer in the past. Morgan says he created the ad on spec as an ad pitch to EA, though it appears not to have been picked up. It's a pity, because the clip was just starting to get us excited for a return to (evil) Wonderland.
Spicy Horse teasing Alice sequel for 2011 release
We were surprised earlier this year to learn Spicy Horse was creating a follow-up to American McGee's dark take on Alice in Wonderland, which itself seemed like a concept so common and benign in today's market as to almost be kind of adorable. But consider us officially shocked after watching this video on the game's teaser site. It actually has us interested in the project -- apparently due in 2011. If the creepy stop-motion animation is indicative of the final product's look we'll be more than a little intrigued; a notion surprising enough to make us wonder if we've been hitting the Caterpillar's hookah just a bit too hard. [Via Videogamer.com]
American McGee says XBLA, PSN need to evolve
When it comes to digital distribution on consoles, American McGee feels that the model "still has some evolving to do." The game designer -- whose credits include Alice as well as Doom and Quake -- recently told Geek.com that while his ambitious 24-episode experiment Grimm could be ported over to such platforms as Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, the process needs some work before that would happen."Porting this sort of stuff is straightforward," claimed McGee, who added that "the biggest issue" sits with the platforms' content approval and distribution model. XBLA's certification process has long proved a cumbersome hurdle for developers, with McGee noting,"When a single title might take months to get through review and approval (take Braid, as an example), pushing 24 episodes through would translate to years of approval process."McGee is currently spinning his creative wheels on the recently announced sequel to Alice, a property that's also been mentioned in movie circles for some time. The rights currently sit with producer Scott Faye, who was responsible for 2008's big screen take on Max Payne, a film McGee lambasted, saying, "I wasn't able to sit through the entire thing ... I just couldn't connect to the film version." You, sir, were not alone.[Via 1UP]
DICE 2009: EA announces American McGee's Alice 2
According to a tweet from Geoff Keighley from the ongoing DICE summit, EA CEO John Riccitiello has just revealed a sequel to American McGee's Alice, coming soon. Details are slim -- in fact, we just told you all of them right now -- but we can assume that Alice 2 will have American McGee's name on the cover, and will probably be another third-person action game that takes elements from the Alice in Wonderland story and makes them all edgy and gothy. We will pass along actual (i.e. non-conjectured) information as soon as it is available. Update: While we've never known Keighley to not be a man of his word, official evidence is always welcome. EA adds that the Alice sequel is in development for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 by American McGee's Spicy Horse studio. Says EA Partners GM David DeMartini: "EA Partners is ready to help [American McGee] bring his innovative vision for the franchise to even darker, more exciting places."
American McGee seeks to bring kart-racing MMO to the west
Lots of people predict a new game being the next WoW-killer, or at least irritate others with those predictions, but in China some people are talking about a KartRider-killer. One of the most popular games in China -- indeed, throughout Asia -- is an MMO based off of GoKart racing and it looks like other competitors are about to take on Nexon's KartRider dominance. What's interesting is that the main person behind this is none other than American McGee, who's now turning his attention to the MMO space with a new game called BaiJiu Racer, which our sister site Big Download reports.If you've ever played the trippy game American McGee's Alice, a twisted continuation of Alice in Wonderland released in 2000, you'll probably remember his name. American McGee currently heads up the Shanghai-based Spicy Horse game studio which most recently developed the episodic PC game Grimm. BaiJiu Racer (context: BaiJiu is a 120 proof liquor) already has a Chinese publisher, but McGee is seeking to bring the title to western markets as well, and is putting out a call to interested parties. While a kart-racing game might not seem like the most viable MMO game to release outside of Asia, you might want to have a look at the trailer found below the cut, it looks like fun.
GameTap Thursday: Grimm meets The Fisherman and his Wife; Prince of Persia also flips in
Katamari Grimm-acy rolls on this week as American McGee's Grimm tells the tale of The Fisherman and His Wife. Remember each episode is available for free to all for the first 24 hours after release, after which it becomes available to GameTap subscribers only. Grimm: The Fisherman and His Wife (Windows) - Greedy wife is bound to get what she deserves! Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (Windows) - The final chapter in the Sands of Time trilogy brings back some of the first game's charm and cuts out a lot of the second title's emo. There are no new additions to GameTap's free games lineup this week. If you still haven't tried the first episode of Grimm, it's available to play for free and doesn't require a huge time commitment.
A Grimm first trailer
American McGee's Grimm begins its 24-episode adventure on GameTap this Thursday, July 31, with A Boy Learns What Fear Is. The first trailer was recently released from its Disney-esque sugary confines and can be found after the break.From our hands-on experience with Grimm's first couple episodes, it's definitely worth taking the title out for a spin. Each episode only requires about a half hour to go through and, if you know how to keep an appointment, it'll be possible to play each one for free.
