Commodore 64
Alice in Wonderland is an adventure game developed by Dale Disharoon and published by Windham Classics in 1985 for the Commodore 64 and Apple II system, one of five games developed by Windham in the 1980s based off of children's books. A remake of the game was later developed by Spinnaker Software and published by Phillips Interactive Media in 1992 for the Phillips CD-I, which made slight modifications to the gameplay and design, as well as improving the graphics, adding voice-acting, and...questionable claymation animations for characters.The game largely follows the events and story of Lewis Carroll's duology Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, with a young girl named Alice spending an afternoon outside with her older sister before seeing a white rabbit fretting about being late. Following the rabbit down his hole, Alice soon finds herself stuck in Wonderland, a nonsensical place full of strange characters. The game consists mostly of interacting with these characters and collecting items, advancing through the world, and ultimately attempting to be crowned Queen and escape the rabbit hole.
Tropes that exist across both versions of the game:
- Ability Required to Proceed: Alice will occasionally run into doors or tunnels that she's too large to pass through, or a jump that she's too small to make. She can ingest a cake or dark mushroom in order to grow larger, and can ingest an elixir or light mushroom to grow smaller, as in the original novel.
- All Just a Dream: Early in Wonderland, Alice will run into the Red King, who is sleeping and can not be roused. It's heavily implied that the entire game is the Red King's dream, and that if he wakes up Wonderland will cease to exist. In the bad ending, where Alice spends more than 50 in-game days in Wonderland, the Red King awakens and ends the game.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Perhaps somewhat anti-climatic in presentation, the purpose of the second half of the game is nevertheless to ultimately be crowned Queen of Wonderland by collecting the proper items and passing through the looking-glass back to the start of the game.
- Backtracking: A significant part of the game involves going back to a certain location or character with an item or information gathered later in the game. The most egregious and extensive example comes at the half-way point, when Alice has to put a nest of baby birds to sleep in order to pacify the mother bird into allowing her to proceed through the looking glass. The only way to do so is to go all the way back to the rabbit hole where you started the game, then use the top hat to fly up to a previously-unreachable door, where a mouse will teach you the 'Shut Your Beaks' song. Unless the player actually managed to notice and remember that the door existed at all, it's very likely that this part of the game will involve slowly combing through every single screen of the game world until finally happening upon it.
- Big Bad Ensemble: The Queen of Hearts is the closest thing the game has to a villain, as it's on her orders that Alice can be thrown into prison at various points throughout the game. By the end, however, the villain is the Jabberwocky, a creature that steals people's names.
- Bigger on the Inside: On many occasions, Alice will enter a house that is clearly contained within a single screen from the outside, yet the interior of the house is many times bigger and covers multiple screens worth.
- Bizarrchitecture: A lot of the game world doesn't make much logical sense, although justified in that Wonderland isn't supposed to make sense. At one part of the game, in order to proceed, Alice has to use the top hat to fly up into the sky, then fall back down to the screen she was at previously, which is now a completely different location.
- Book Ends: On entering the rabbit hole, the first character Alice can run into is the Walrus, who is standing next to a looking glass and playing music in anticipation of the Queen entering through the glass. At the end of the game, Alice ends up being the one emerging out from the looking glass, having collected all the items and handled the tasks necessary to be crowned Queen, and the walrus is the final character she runs into.
- Irrelevant Sidequest: It's entirely possible to beat the game and get the best possible ending without ever collecting certain items or interacting with certain characters, and doing these tasks serves no real purpose and offers no benefit. Presenting the Queen of Hearts with your invitation to play croquet is entirely optional, and it's quite easy to play the whole game without encountering the lion, much less giving him plum cake.
- Point of No Return: Very early in the game, Alice goes down the rabbit hole and can not go back up to the surface until she's been crowned Queen. So if a player goes too far down the rabbit hole without collecting the tin of comfits from Alice's sister, the game very quickly becomes impossible to finish, since not even renew will get you back above ground by the time you need that tin.
- Sticky Fingers: The bandersnatches (or 'nimble-hands' as referred to by the narration) go back and forth doing jumping jacks on certain areas of the game, and if the player touches them they steal an item from Alice's inventory. These items are quite often ones required to beat the game, but fortunately stolen items can be collected at two set locations in the game.
- Talk to Everyone: Unless the player is following a walkthrough or already knows exactly how to beat the game, this is ultimately the only way to get through the game. Not only should you talk to everyone you encounter, you should exhaust every possible option for how to talk to them, as certain options are the only way to get particular items or prompts for riddle solutions.
- Except for the one option that offends the character, forcing you to wait a few hours to resume conversation. You need to take note of the single bad choice, and not do it next time for that character at that location. All choices outside of the question action offend at least one character.
- Timed Mission: The whole game ends up being this. The best ending involves beating the game in less than 15 in-game days, with lesser endings for finishing the game in less than 30 or 50 days. After 50 days, the Red King awakens from his slumber and Wonderland disappears, having been his dream all along.
- You Shall Not Pass!: Many characters throughout the game will, at one point or another, block Alice from proceeding through the map unless some prerequisite is met. Often, a character will have to be presented a certain item, or be talked to in a particular way, in order to stop blocking Alice's path. A few of these instances even involve a character tossing Alice in prison if she attempts to pass them.
Tropes exclusive to the CD-I remake:
- A Winner Is You: Unlike the Commodore 64 version, the game ends when Alice steps through the looking glass into the ballroom. The Walrus will introduce Alice as the Queen of Wonderland, the narrator will announce that you've won and compliment you for being smart, and a flashing 'Congratulations Queen Alice' message will appear on screen for several seconds before cutting to credits.
- Stop Motion: One of the most obvious changes this version of the game made was having claymation characters during scenes where Alice is conversing with a character instead of just remaining on the main game screen. A few of these interactions have the characters moving as they're talking, but most of them were just a single still image.
- Voice Actors: Another large change from the original game was extensive voice acting for every character in the game, instead of just on-screen text. The scope of the voice acting is actually remarkably robust, with Alice having unique conversation options for every character and situation outside of the basic Who Where and Why questions, and every character having specific replies for anything Alice can say to them.
