Alice: Madness Returns Review: A Sequel That Plays Like a Diagnosis

Alice: Madness Returns opens a year after Alice Liddell walked out of Rutledge Asylum, and it wastes no time proving that being discharged and being well are different things. She is 19, living in a Victorian London orphanage under the care of Dr. Angus Bumby, a psychiatrist who uses hypnosis to help his child patients forget. She still sees Wonderland. It is a convincing argument that a sequel can be a diagnosis.

Trailer, via Electronic Arts.

A Victorian London Orphanage

Spicy Horse Games built this game for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360, with Electronic Arts publishing. Series creator American McGee directed it, and it is a direct sequel to American McGee’s Alice from 2000.

The premise is a horror story wearing a platformer’s clothes. Alice believes she caused the fire that killed her family. Bumby treats traumatized children by erasing their memories — a practice that sounds merciful until the game tells you what he does with the blanks.

Madness Returns sets its real-world scenes in 1875. The orphanage, the asylum, the lawyer’s office: all of it is gray, cramped and polite. Then Wonderland arrives, and the game’s whole personality changes.

The Infernal Train and the Ruin

Wonderland is corrupted this time, not just twisted. An Infernal Train rampages through the landscape, leaving behind the Ruin, a force that tries to stop Alice. The Cheshire Cat tells her the corruption came from outside her, not from her, and pushes her to find former friends and foes who might know the source.

That structure — brief returns to London between Wonderland episodes — is a smart piece of design. In reality, Alice learns from the family lawyer that her sister Elizabeth, nicknamed Lizzie, died first in the fire despite being farthest from its source. Lizzie had been locked in her room.

The detail lands hard. It reframes the entire first game’s guilt.

Teeth, Teapots and the Vorpal Blade

The combat is hack-and-slash with a puzzle platformer’s bones, played from a third-person perspective. Alice runs, jumps, dodges, attacks and shrinks. Her primary weapon is the Vorpal Blade, a decorated kitchen knife.

The rest of the arsenal is domestic objects turned lethal, which is the series’ signature joke. The Pepper Grinder becomes a crank-operated Gatling gun. The Hobby Horse works as a sledgehammer for heavy damage and breaking barriers. The Teapot Cannon fires exploding tea sieves. Teeth dropped by foes or scattered through levels upgrade these weapons.

Two tools resist upgrading because they defend rather than attack. The Umbrella deflects and reflects most incoming projectiles. The Clockwork Bomb is a time-delayed rabbit alarm clock that does minimal damage but works as a decoy or a weight to hold switches down.

Health is tracked by rose petals. Hit zero and you restart at the most recent checkpoint. Giant purple flowers restore health. Falling into pits or dangerous liquids does not damage Alice — it just puts her back on a nearby platform.

The Duchess, the Hatter and the Dollmaker

Alice works her way through Wonderland’s citizens looking for answers: the Duchess, the Mad Hatter, the Mock Turtle, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Caterpillar. She learns the Queen of Hearts still lives in diminished form after her earlier defeat. At the Queen’s castle, the Queen’s true form resembles Alice’s younger self, and she names the entity behind the train — the Dollmaker.

Back in London, Alice remembers the night of the fire and realizes Bumby was there. He killed Lizzie and the rest of her family. He is trying to erase the fire from her memory and leave her a “blank toy,” as he has done with other children, to be sold to abusive masters and child molesters.

Bumby admits it at Moorgate station. He set the fire after Lizzie refused his advances, removing witnesses to his having raped her. He tells Alice that wiping out her Wonderland will make her forget, while he remains in high society. She kills the Dollmaker in Wonderland, then pushes Bumby into the path of an oncoming train.

The Numbers

• Release year: 2011
• Developer: Spicy Horse Games
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• Platforms: PlayStation 3, PC (Microsoft Windows), Xbox 360
• Director: American McGee
• Predecessor: American McGee’s Alice (2000)
• Setting: 1875, one year after Alice’s release from Rutledge Asylum
• Modes: Single player
• Genres: Platform, puzzle, hack and slash, adventure
• Score: 7.2 of 10

Londerland and What Comes After

The ending puts Alice in Londerland, a hybrid of London and Wonderland, wandering into unknown terrain while the Cheshire Cat says she found the truth that was “worth the pain fighting for.” Wonderland is damaged but safe for now.

That ambiguity is the right note. The game never pretends Alice is cured. It only argues she has stopped being someone else’s project.

The weaknesses are real. Combat repeats itself across a long campaign, and the platforming is more serviceable than sharp. The arsenal is inventive but shallow in practice — six weapons, and most fights reward two of them. The London sections carry the story while the Wonderland sections carry the length, and the two halves do not always agree on pacing.

What holds up is the writing’s refusal to soften Bumby. He is not a monster in a cape. He is a respected professional who monetizes forgetting, and the game makes his crimes specific rather than atmospheric. The Lizzie detail — locked in her room, farthest from the fire, first to die — is the kind of fact that turns a revenge plot into an argument.

American McGee pitched further sequels for years. In 2023, EA, which owns the franchise rights, rejected the pitch. That leaves Madness Returns as the last released game in the series, which is a strange fate for a game about unfinished business.

It earned mixed-to-positive reviews at release, and 7.2 of 10 is fair. The combat and the backtracking keep it from the top tier. The story, the art direction and the nerve to name what Bumby does put it well above the average licensed dark fantasy of its era.

Worth playing for the London scenes and the ending. Worth remembering for what it refuses to look away from.

Alice: Madness Returns · American McGee · dark fantasy · game review · PS3 · Spicy Horse Games