Horror puzzle Horror escape Short horror Psychological horror

Alice is Dead - Ep 1

Rate it

Welcome to Wonderland. Alice is dead, and you do not know who you are.

Platforms: Browser
Price: Free
Rated: 4.70 out of 5 from 4,948 votes and over 2.2 million views on Newgrounds; Daily Feature and Weekly 2nd Place in September 2009; Jay is Games named it among its Best of Casual Gameplay 2009.
Length: about 10 minutes
Players: 1
Controls: Mouse only: click to look, pick up and use items
Made by: ImpendingRiot and Hyptosis
Released: 2009

What frightens You wake in a locked room with earthen walls in Wonderland beside Alice's body with no memory of who you are; only her remains are left, words scrawled on the walls seem to accuse you, and an old 1930s song about the bogeyman plays while you search the room for a way out.
Content: dead body, skeletal remains.

The first episode of a free point-and-click trilogy on Newgrounds that turns Alice in Wonderland into a grim mystery. You wake in a locked room beside Alice's corpse with no memory, and you have to gather and combine strange objects to get out of the room and start to learn who you are.

About Alice is Dead - Ep 1

Alice is Dead - Ep 1 is a free Flash point-and-click game written by Mike Morin (ImpendingRiot) and the artist Hyptosis, who drew it, released on Newgrounds in September 2009. It was a Daily Feature there and is still rated 4.70 out of 5 by almost 5,000 voters. It is the first of three episodes.

The maker sums it up in three lines: you have arrived in Wonderland, which is good; Alice is dead, which is bad; and you do not know who you are, which is the worst. You start locked in a small room with earthen walls and what is left of her. Scattered around it are a bottle, a bone, a rock, a handle, a card and other odd things, and the only door is shut.

Play is classic inventory puzzling. You click on everything, pick up what you can, combine items with each other and use them on the room. The puzzles follow Wonderland's own strange logic, and the game answers wrong attempts with dry, sarcastic remarks. Jay is Games described it as one part mystery, one part escape game and a big helping of wrongness.

It does not use jump scares. Its unease comes from the drawn scenes, from what the room tells you about how Alice died and who might have done it, and from an old 1930s song about the bogeyman. Jay is Games called the tone more Brothers Grimm than Lewis Carroll.

It takes about ten minutes and ends on a cliffhanger that leads straight into Episode 2. It suits players who like short, strange escape puzzles with a dark fairy-tale feel, such as Gretel and Hansel or Exmortis.

How to play Alice is Dead - Ep 1

Open the game's Newgrounds page in a desktop browser and press play; the old Flash game runs in Newgrounds' Ruffle player, so nothing needs installing.
Click Continue to start the episode.
Click around the room to find every item you can pick up; they gather in your inventory.
Select an item and click it on another item or on part of the room to combine or use it.
Use what you make to open the way out of the room and reach the end of the episode, then go on to Episode 2.

Tips

Read every remark the game makes when you click something; the dry comments often hint at what to try.
Try items on each other as well as on the room; several tools are made from two things.
Think in Wonderland's logic rather than real-world logic when a puzzle seems impossible.
If Ruffle runs slowly, enable hardware acceleration in your browser.