“The Art of Alice: Madness Returns” by R.J. Berg

This review was originally published at Good Reads.

I was very excited to learn that there was an artbook containing the concept art for the new EA game Alice: Madness Returns, of which is a sequel to the PC game American McGee’s Alice. I very much liked the original game and was surprised to find that another game was in the works.

This artbook contains concept art that was created way back in the earliest development stages of Alice: Madness Returns. The artwork is very creepy and surreal, and very much in the spirit of the original game. All of the artwork has captions explaining how and why the artist chose to create that given piece, and whether or not the concept made its way into the final game (a lot of concepts did not make it into the final game). It was a great chronicle of the game’s development. It also had a lot of information on what players can expect when the game is released in June.

This artbook also made me realize why video games are so expensive – a game like this takes years to develop and requires hard work of very talented people. A lot of this art could definitely stand on its own. I believe that someday video games will be considered works of art in their own right (like Tomb Raider: Underworld, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry 4, etc).

This will be a great promotional tool to persuade new and old fans to play the game, and is a great keepsake for die-hard fans of the franchise.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me preview this book.