Lost in Wonderland

This was an assignment given to me during my third and final year of university with the task of creating a game based on an existing fictional world. I chose Alice in Wonderland because of how rich the world is with characters and themes that would translate perfectly into levels and mechanics.

I took advantage of the iconic snacks that Alice eats to change size since they had the most potential to be core mechanics, and simplified them into a big red potion and a small blue potion.

The story follows Alice chasing the White Rabbit to try and give him a gold coin which fell out of his pocket and grew. To carry it, she must be big so she can pass it through the burrow to the next level, but to pass through that burrow herself, she must be small. Despite her good intentions, she ends up in the Red Queen’s mansion, where she takes the coin for herself and completes her collection.

My goal was to have a new mechanic in every level that expanded on the main mechanics of shrinking and growing. This would be coupled with platforming to create relatively simple puzzles that felt concise and satisfying to solve and walk through.

In level 3 for example, the player can only shrink and grow by smoking from Absolem’s pipes, which means it’s an infinite source but they need to walk back to it each time. The Cheshire Cat in level 4 adds a new way of navigating the level by teleporting the player throughout it. Keys are introduced early on as new items needed to open doors blocking the player’s way. The Card Guards and Flower Crocodiles in later levels add stakes to the platforming since they add involuntary ways of resetting the level.

I realised very early on that if the player was able to carry many items at a time, it would make the puzzles even easier and put less of an emphasis on the platforming since no backtracking would be required. To solve this, the player has one slot in the top right corner that can hold one item until it is used. This choice also helped to keep the screen free from GUI (and save me the hassle of programming an inventory system!).