Alice in Wonderland (2010 video game)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Following the smash success of Tim Burton's 2010 movie, video game developers rushed to release Alice in Wonderland for the Wii, PC, and Nintendo DS. It loosely follows the plot of the movie as the player takes on the roles of five Underlandian residents -- the White Rabbit, the Dormouse, the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat, and the Mad Hatter -- and battles the forces of the Red Queen while helping Alice achieve her destiny as the savior of Underland. The game is part RPG, part puzzle solving, and part action. The PC and Wii versions are essentially the same game, while the DS game has a number of differences.

The console version of the game provides examples of the following:
  • Ability Required to Proceed: Alice is too tall or too small for certain doors, requiring the party members to locate the items that make her grow or shrink. When the White Queen opens up the world map, she also fixes the doors so that Alice no longer needs to drink potion or eat cake in order to pass through them.
  • Action Girl: The Dormouse
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Mushroom Forest is populated with gigantic mosquitoes.
  • Call a Hit Point a Smeerp: Throughout the game you must try to collect as many "Impossible Ideas" as you can. These come from inside chests, from destroying landscaping, and from defeating enemies.
  • The Chosen One: Ironically, while the movie on which the game is based paints Alice as this, she's an NPC throughout the game.
  • Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: If you run out of HP, you simply respawn to try again. This usually doesn't even require you to restart the fight from the beginning.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The appearance of some of the characters, particularly the Red Queen in some scenes, is eerily reminiscent of The Sims.
  • Down the Rabbit Hole: Forcibly. In this version of the story, the White Rabbit yanks Alice into the hole rather than waiting for her curiosity to make her fall in.
  • Faceless Goons: The Red Knights, who show up randomly and must be defeated before gameplay can continue.
  • Family Feud: Like the film, the game is prompted by the rivalry between the Red and White Queens.
  • Final Boss: As in the movie, the final battle is against the Jabberwocky.
  • Five-Man Band: And you play all of them!
  • Friendly Enemy: The Hatter and the Cheshire Cat are practically this. While the movie shows that there's a bit of animosity between them because of the Cat's inaction on the Horunvendush Day (when the Hatter's family was killed), they're mostly good friends. In the game, the Hatter is openly hostile to the Cat, who isn't entirely pleasant either.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Inverted. That is not Johnny Depp voicing the Hatter in the game, but it's a pretty good impersonation. The only actors who reprise their roles from the film are those of Alice, the White Rabbit, Dormouse, Cheshire Cat, the Knave, and Hamish.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: They're everywhere.
  • Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: The White Rabbit can only jump on top of the mushrooms that have ladders attached to them.
  • Invisibility: The Cheshire Cat, of course. In addition to himself, he can make other objects become visible.
  • The Load: Alice. Seriously. She does virtually nothing useful for a large part of the game, and provides annoying commentary while you're trying to get on with things. Meanwhile, you have to constantly keep an eye on her to make sure the bad guys don't capture her.
  • Loading Screen: These appear every so often, and feature portraits hanging in the round room (you know, the one with all the doors) along with quotes by one or another of the characters. Something of an oddity, because the 'quotes' are never actually said in either the game or the film.
  • Master of Illusion: The Hatter's special ability.
  • Mind Over Matter/Psychic Powers: The March Hare is telekinetic.
  • Non-Lethal KO: Required in a few of the miniboss battles.
  • Or Was It a Dream?: The game's ending makes this even less clear than the movie did. While the movie ended with Alice choosing to drink the Jabberwocky blood and return to her normal life, the game takes the option away from her (presumably so the player can't decide to stay in Underland/Wonderland). She drinks the blood because she's told that it is "Futterwacken potion" which will make her dance like the Hatter, and then...they all wave at her while she fades away.
  • Point Build System: Skill upgrades for each character are acquired by finding stray chess pieces throughout the world. But you must then enter the 'shop' and purchase the skills with your Impossible Ideas.
  • Rewarding Vandalism: Cutting down greenery and breaking things like stray chairs yields Impossible Ideas.
  • Save Point: The sparkly yellow wisps of smoke found here and there.
  • Ship Tease: Mallymkin the Dormouse remarks, at one point, that the Hatter is kind of smitten with the White Queen.
  • Time Master: The White Rabbit's special ability is freezing and manipulating time.
  • The Unseen: Hamish, Alice's would-be betrothed, never appears onscreen; the player just hears him shouting at her from out of view at the beginning and end of the game.
  • Video Game Geography: Deserts, swamps, and forests full of oversized greenery will keep you on your toes.
  • Welcome to Corneria: A number of NPCs, such as the talking flowers in the Mushroom Forest, are guilty of this.
  • World Map: Solving enough of one section opens up other sections of Underland. When you finally reach the White Queen, she opens all of the map areas that you haven't already unlocked.
The DS Version provides examples of the following: