You can skip this part if you're only interested in the technical improvements!

Who is American McGee?

American James McGee was born on December 13, 1972, in Dallas, Texas.

He was part of id Software's "second generation" of developers, working on games such as The Ultimate Doom, Doom II, Quake and Quake II. In 1998 he was fired from id Software and soon joined Electronic Arts to work as creative director for American McGee's Alice.

What is American McGee's Alice?

Released on December 6, 2000; American McGee's Alice is an action-adventure third-person game developed by Rogue Entertainment, published by Electronic Arts and directed by American James McGee. It recieved positive reviews but remained as a "niche" game.

He later started production on a new project, American McGee's Oz which was to be produced in conjunction with Ronin Games, but was canceled over financial difficulties at Atari. He got to release American McGee's Grimm, developed by his Shanghai-based game development studio Spicy Horse for the online service GameTap as a 23 weekly episodic segments in 2007.

At the 2009 D.I.C.E. Summit, Electronic Arts' CEO John Riccitiello announced that a sequel to American McGee's Alice was in development for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

What is Alice: Madness Returns?

Release on June, 2011 for western audiences and July of that same year in Japan; Alice: Madness Returns is a sequel to American McGee's Alice, again as a action-adventure third-person game but emphasizing platform mechanics. It got favorable reviews and, again, became a "niche" game with a now bigger fanbase due to its accesibility on 7th generation consoles.

In May 2011, McGee reported that a story had already been created for a potential third game. It may have been called Alice in Otherland and would've been released episodically.

I personally recommend the official official artbook, "The Art of Alice: Madness Returns".

What is Alice: Otherlands?

In July 15, 2013, McGee announced a Kickstarter campaign for the production of a series of animated film called Alice: Otherlands. It successfully reached its goal on August 4. On October 30, 2015 it was released on various streaming platforms.

In several interviews, McGee expressed his desire to make Alice: Otherlands into a video game as originally planned, but stated that will depend entirely on the overall success of the animated shorts.

What is Alice: Asylum?

In September 2017, McGee announced that he was working on a license proposal for the third installment of the Alice franchise, tentatively titled Alice: Asylum. It was one of two Alice projects aimed for a release in the 2020s, the other being a TV series which is confirmed to be in development.

Alice: Asylum was originally envisioned as being primarily a chronological prequel to American McGee's Alice, however, the newest draft has introduced new ideas that render this idea inaccurate. Asylum is intended to be the finale of an Alice trilogy, and assumes the player has already experienced both American McGee's Alice and Madness Returns. Because Electronic Arts is difficult to fund another Alice game and is very protective over its IP rights, Asylum is intended to be crowdfunded to show EA that their IP holds potential and interest. McGee originally intended October 2018 for the launch of the crowdfunding campaign, although it was put on hold. In November 2018, McGee mentioned that the legal proceedings are going smoothly. Over the years, McGee has brainstormed the concept of the game, collaborating with artists and fans on his Patreon, preparing art, writing the story/design, etc.


In August 2021, McGee released a potential game script and narrative outline, meaning the story of Asylum is already done for the most part.

He released a PDF file titled "Alice: Asylum - Game Design Bible" on his Patreon (link here[www.patreon.com]).

McGee tried to get permission over the Alice IP, but not to necessarily have EA as a publisher. "We're working to self-publish or publish through other channels. Licensing the IP from EA and developing/publishing independently is the goal." He also tried to obtain permanent ownership to the Alice license.

Here comes the sad part.

In April 7, 2023, McGee announced that EA had passed on the project and that EA was unwilling to sell or license the Alice IP. Since the Alice: Asylum team had "exhausted every option for getting a new Alice game made," the project was officially cancelled. Apparently EA implied that the title just wouldn't fit well with current releases despite the large fanbase Madness Returns inspired.

American McGee made a tweet on April 7, 2023 (link here) explaining that "Alice had a good run but the dream is over." It was linked to a Patreon post called "End of the Adventure" (link here[www.patreon.com]) where he seems exhausted, this project took years of constantly trying to just make it happen, and for it to just be denied by EA.

McGee also says that he retires from game development.

Originally posted by American James McGee:

For my part, I have also reached an endpoint with Alice and with game production in general. I have no other ideas or energy left to apply toward getting a new Alice game made. Nor do I have any interest in pursuing new game ideas within the context of the current environment for game development.

This brings us full circle to the statement I made years ago which initiated EA reaching out to me to ask if I wanted to explore making a new Alice game...

I have no control over the Alice IP and no ability to make a new game happen. That control and ability rest entirely with EA.

If someone does manage to convince EA to make "Asylum", I would like to make clear that, from this point forward, I have no desire to be involved with that or any other Alice-related development.

My involvement with Alice is also at an end.

Going forward, I will focus on my family and our family business at Mysterious.

So... Here we are.

There's more stuff to be talked about, such as some of McGee's tweets or the supposed upcoming TV series directed by David Hayter in collaboration with Radar Pictures, Abandon Entertainment, confirmed by Hayter and McGee but almost unknown to the Internet.

Now to start tweaking the game files you'll need to locate one of the following text files.

• AliceEngine.ini - Inside of your Documents folder.
  
  Documents/My Games/Alice Madness Returns/AliceGame/Config
  
  
• DefaultEngine.ini - Inside of the game's installation folder.
  
  /Steam/steamapps/common/Alice Madness Returns/AliceGame/Config

You'll just need to try with one of both files.

Some users report that making changes on one of those files makes nothing, so if the first one doesn't work, try with the second.

It turns out that Alice: Madness Returns on PC is capped to a framerate of 30 frames per second. This makes no sense, as it is so easy to uncap and it doesn't affect the game at all.

Open the selected file with any text file reader (Such as Notepad) and find a line that says "MaxSmoothedFrameRate=31" and change it to "MaxSmoothedFrameRate=60".

Alice: Madness Returns once had a Special Edition that came with a lot of extra content, but it was never officially part of the Steam catalogue and it is now removed from the Electronic Arts store (It was available when Origin existed).

However almost everything that came with that Special Edition is already installed along the base game on Steam (And most releases for PC), you just need to unlock it.

Open the same file (AliceEngine.ini or DefaultEngine.ini) and locate a line that says "GIsSpecialPCEdition=FALSE", and change it to "GIsSpecialPCEdition=TRUE".



This Special Edition contains the following:

• New costumes and skins for Alice .
  
• New weapons for Alice.
  
  Both available at the main menu at the Equip button.
  
  
• A remastered version of 2000s classic American McGee's Alice.
  
  Available to play at the main menu.

However if you click on "Play American McGee's Alice" the game will crash, that's because there's no American McGee's Alice on your game files. You need to install it manually.

To be able to play the remastered version that came with the Special Edition of Alice: Madness Returns you'll need to download a folder called Alice1 that contains the actual game.

• Link here![mega.nz]

Steam hates MEGA links, so just in case, here's the same download link. You just need to replace the ・ with a regular dot to access it.

• mega・nz/file/X51mSTyQ#QRaK0V6xRYlCbvthS47pDDb1k2Dg9WNNCCxjp5PsFGY

If these links gets censored by Steam, go to my personal blog (dotvalinon Wordpress, link here[dotvalin.wordpress.com]) and find this same guide there (link here[dotvalin.wordpress.com]).

Now extract that .rar file and put the Alice1 folder inside the main Alice Madness Returns directory.

Steam/steamapps/common/Alice Madness Returns

There.



Now go to the text file (AliceEngine.ini or DefaultEngine.ini) and locate a line that says "[AliceGame.AliceGameEngine]", below it you should see "Alice1Path=..\..\..\Alice1\bin", change it to "Alice1Path=..\..\Alice1\bin".



This is needed because the .ini file contained the Alice1 location of the Origin release, and this Steam version is slightly different.


Classic 2000s American McGee's Alice had a list of cheats that can be used via its console, however this 2011 remastered version does not allow cheats due to its console being disabled.

Thankfully user Peixoto released a patch for this on his AhkHook website (Link here[www.autohotkey.com]). Sadly it's taken down, but someone managed to reupload it to the Internet Archive (Link here[archive.org]).

Here's a list of cheats:

• wuss - Get all weapons.
  
• god - Toggle god mode.
  
• noclip - Toggle noclip mode.
  
• health # - Set Health to # value (100=Full).
  
• notarget - Toggle invisibility.
  
• cg_3rd_person 0 - Enables first person view.
  
• cg_cameradist -45 - Toggle first person View
  
• cg_cameradist 128 - Toggle normal view.
  
• give all - Get all weapons and ammo.
  
• eventlist - Display all possible cheat/console codes you can use.

You can find more cheat codes on the Alice Fandom Wiki (Link here[alice.fandom.com]).


The text file that checks configs for this game its called default_pc.cfg and you can find it here:

.../Alice Madness Returns/Alice1/bin/base

And just as Madness Returns, this game creates another config file inside of .../documents/My Games.

• If you're having trouble with fullscreen, try changing seta r_fullscreen 0 to seta r_fullscreen 1.
  
  
• You might have to enable console inside the game's menu.
  
  
• Alice1 contains every language released for classic American McGee's Alice (Spanish, English, French and German), but there's no direct way to change it, it will play on the same language selected for Alice: Madness Returns.

American McGee's Alice is as problematic as Madness Returns, so if you're experiencing common crashes when saving, loading or at the very start of the game, want to make one of the following tweaks.

• At the main menu, try disabling gamepad.
  
  This one worked for me when the game crashed at the very start, after the first cutscene with Alice falling down, with a message saying "Server Shutdown - WARNING: UI_WidgetPrint couldn't find widget named aliceDialog - Z_Free: memory block wrote past end" in the console.
  
  
• At the main menu, disable the fullscreen option.
  
  This also worked after the first cutscene crash.
  
  
• Disable or force VSync with external software.

I say all this assuming that your PC meets the minimum requirements.


At some point you'll need to climb up vines. You'll notice that there's only a key assigned to "Climb down" but nothing to "Climb up", and online guides will only tell you to press Enter to climb up.



For some reason, to climb up a vine you'll need to use the alternate attack button, not Enter, not at least on this remastered version of the game.

Now, back to Alice: Madness Returns.

If you want to skip the introductory credits, you need to open one of both text files (AliceEncine.ini or DefaultEngine.ini) and locate a line that says "[FullScreenMovie]".

Below it you'll see this:


Change it to this:




If this trick doesn't work or stops working, you can try making some changes to the main game's files on Steam.

Go to /Steam/steamapps/common/Alice Madness Returns/AliceGame/Movies and locate three files called Intro_EA.bik, Intro_SH.bik and TechLogo_Short.bik, and remove it or just change their extension from .bik to .old.

If you want to enable Ambient Oclussion, try this.

Go to one of both text files (AliceEngine.ini or DefaultEngine.ini) and find a line that says "AmbientOcclusion=False", now change it to "AmbientOcclusion=True".

If you want to force another resolution, try this.

Go to one of both text files (AliceEngine.ini or DefaultEngine.ini) and find a line that says:

If you want to enable Motion Blur or VSync, try this.

In the same text file, again below [SystemSettingsEditor] you should see two text lines, UseVsync= and MotionBlur=. Turn both to TRUE.

And choose your preferred resolution.

If you're having trouble using the umbrella, try this.

Go to Steam\steamapps\common\Alice Madness Returns\AliceGame\Config and open the text file called "DefaultInput.ini".

Find a line that says "Key_Block = TriggerBlock" and change it to "Key_Block = TriggerBlock true | OnRelease TriggerBlock false".

If this did not work, do the same with its equivalent file inside of .../Documents/My Games/Alice Madness Returns/AliceGame/Config.

To be honest, Alice: Madness Returns doesn't need any of these things to be enjoyable, maybe just the FPS cap thing but anything else.

However all this info needed to be recollected for anyone who wanted to have a full immersive experience inside the tragic version of Lewis Carroll's Alice written by American James McGee.

I hope it to be helpful, and tell me if I there's a mistake or if any link gets removed.



Have a nice day!