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This is a sweet little gem that sticks to the roots of Lewis Carroll's classic story of a girl that falls down the rabbit hole and into an entirely new land. The game is an edutainment title designed for kids 8 and older. This Alice plays in a episodic manner similar to the novel. Alice follows the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole and finds herself in the Hall of Doors, which becomes a focal point of the game from which the player can leap to explore different areas. Throughout the game, Alice encounters the Eat Me, Drink Me items that allow her to change size, which opens up more to do in the game. The graphics are interesting. They are a mix of 3D modeling, some line-drawn cartoons, and, believe it or not, an FMV Alice. These have varying degrees of success, but all together, they actually form a really nice mix that evokes the spirit of Carroll's Alice. The FMV Alice is acceptable, but in a strange attempt to modernize her, she's wearing brown leather shoes and an orange jumpsuit. The game is played in flat screens that each have some areas of interaction and characters to interact with. Each play area has one or more puzzles and other screens to explore to accomplish the overall goal for that area. The puzzles themselves are surprisingly fun. Each puzzle is unique, and all are cleverly designed to fit in well with the theme of the game. In one, the player must reorganize eggs in some bird nests. In another, Alice characters and inventory must be ferried from one side of a river to another—with a few tricks involved in doing so, of course. Characters give clues to puzzles in their speech, and there are a couple of in-game methods for getting help—clicking on Alice herself and clicking on the Cheshire Cat at the top of the screen, which gives the player info about objects on the screen. The game docs themselves also give some helpful hints to solving the puzzles. |
