Alice in Wonderland Game: Four Ways to Play Down the Rabbit Hole
If you want to play an Alice in Wonderland game, there are four good ways to do it today. You can play Alice: Madness Returns, the dark action game EA still sells. You can play the games Lewis Carroll wrote into the book, from the Caucus-race to the Queen’s croquet, at a party or in a classroom. You can read the two novels, which are free. Or you can step inside them as your own character, with a narrator that has read the book and answers whatever you type. Which one fits depends on whether you want a controller, a garden full of guests, a quiet hour, or a conversation with the Cheshire Cat that nobody scripted.
This guide goes through all four, says who each one is for, and ends with how to try the last one tonight without paying anything.
What people mean by an Alice in Wonderland game
The phrase covers several different wishes. Most people searching for it want one of these:
- A video game. Something on a console or a PC, with Alice on the screen. The best known of these is a horror game, which surprises people who were expecting the Disney film.
- A game for a party. A birthday, a themed tea, a school day. Something a group of people can do in a room or a garden.
- The games inside the story. Croquet with flamingoes, the race that everyone wins, the chessboard the second book is built on.
- Wonderland itself. A way to go there and talk back to the Caterpillar.
The table shows where each option lands.
The four options side by side
| Alice: Madness Returns | Games from the book | The two novels | Play inside the novels | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | An action adventure video game | Party games Carroll described | Books by Lewis Carroll | Written game in a browser |
| Players | Just you | A group | Just you | Just you |
| Who you play | Alice | Yourself, in costume if you like | Nobody, you read | Your own character |
| Tone | Dark horror | Silly | Whimsical nonsense | The book’s own |
| Story | Written by the studio | None needed | Written by Carroll | Grows from your choices, grounded in the book |
| Best for | Players who want combat and a twisted Wonderland | Hosts and teachers | Anyone who has only seen the films | Readers who want the world itself |
The claims about EA’s game below are as of September 2026, read from EA’s own pages. The claims about the books are read from the Project Gutenberg editions.
Alice: Madness Returns, the video game
This is the one most players mean when they say “the Alice game”. EA’s page for its Alice games describes the premise like this:
“This twisted take on Lewis Carroll’s classic story brings Alice back to Wonderland on a quest to free its creatures from the evil that’s taking over.”
The same page says the world she wanders “mirrors her own fractured mind”, and that the game returns to Victorian London as Alice seeks refuge in a Wonderland that is “more dangerous than ever”. EA’s store page lists the game under action adventure and horror, offers it on the EA app for Windows with a link through to the Xbox Store, and puts an age check in front of the page. Its screenshots show Alice with a knife, fighting armed playing cards and a mechanical teapot.
So this is Wonderland as a nightmare. It is a good game for the right player, and the wrong gift for a seven-year-old who loves the White Rabbit.
Pick it if you want to hold a controller, fight your way through a broken Wonderland and see a studio’s dark reading of the story.
It is weaker for anyone who wanted the book’s gentle nonsense, and for younger players. You also play EA’s Alice on EA’s path. The story is fixed, and you cannot stop to argue with the Hatter about time.
The games Carroll wrote into the book
Wonderland is full of games already, and most of them can be played by real people with very little equipment. That makes the book itself the best source for a party.
The Caucus-race comes first, in chapter three. The Dodo refuses to define it:
“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it is to do it.”
Everyone runs in a rough circle, starting and stopping when they like, until the Dodo calls the race over and announces the result: “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.” For a children’s party that is a complete set of rules. Mark a circle, let everyone run, hand out a sweet each.
The Queen’s croquet is in chapter eight. The book describes the ground as “all ridges and furrows” and the equipment this way: “the balls were live hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes”. A lawn croquet set with pink mallets does the job, and a house rule that the hoops may walk off is in the spirit of the thing.
The Hatter’s riddle is asked at the tea party: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” It works as a table game. Everyone writes an answer, and the most convincing nonsense wins.
The chessboard belongs to the second book. In Through the Looking-Glass Alice looks out over the country and says “It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played”, then joins it as a pawn. A chess set on the table, with guests named after the pieces, is an easy theme for older players.
| Game | Where it is in the books | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Caucus-race | Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter three | A circle on the ground, a prize each |
| Croquet | Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter eight | A croquet set, a lawn |
| The raven riddle | The tea party chapter | Paper and pens |
| Living chess | Through the Looking-Glass | A chess set |
Pick these if you are hosting a group, especially a young one. They cost almost nothing and everyone already knows the characters.
They are weaker for one person on a quiet evening. A Caucus-race needs a crowd.
The two novels
Every Alice game borrows from two short books: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, from 1865, and Through the Looking-Glass, from 1871. Both are in the public domain, and Project Gutenberg, the free library of public domain books, offers each one to read online or download as an EPUB or a plain text file. Its page for the first book rates it as easy to read, at about a sixth grade level.
Many people know Wonderland only from films. The books are stranger and funnier, and much of what adaptations leave out is the best part: the Mock Turtle’s school subjects, the trial over the tarts, the White Knight who keeps falling off his horse.
Pick them if you have not read them, or not since childhood. Each is an evening’s reading, and every other option here is better once you know them.
They are weaker for anyone who wants to act. Alice makes her own choices, and you watch her make them.
Playing inside the novels as your own character
The fourth way is the newest. You give a narrator the book, and it reads the book before you begin: the places, the creatures, how each one speaks and what each one wants. Then you make your own character and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can refuse the bottle marked “DRINK ME”, take a seat at the tea party and demand a clean cup, or offer to paint the roses properly this time. The narrator keeps the world consistent with what Carroll wrote.
This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a book as a .txt or .epub
file, and it builds an atlas of that book’s world (characters, factions,
places, items and events) before your first scene. Carroll suits it well,
because the Project Gutenberg editions described above are files you can
upload. Each book becomes its own game. Wonderland runs on cards, a furious
Queen and sudden changes of size. The Looking-Glass country runs on chess, and
you cross it square by square.
Pick it if what you want is to be in Wonderland as yourself, asking your own questions, and you would rather start typing tonight than buy a console game or gather a party.
It is weaker for players who want graphics, combat or a controller. It is a written story, read and typed. It also plays alone, so it will not entertain twelve children in a garden.
For more worlds in the same style, see the guides to a Sherlock Holmes game and a Discworld game. For the wider field, see choose your own adventure games and interactive fiction games.
What it takes to start each one
| Option | How to start | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Alice: Madness Returns | Buy it from EA’s store | A Windows PC or an Xbox |
| Games from the book | Reread chapters three and eight | A group, a lawn, prizes |
| The two novels | Download them from Project Gutenberg | Something to read on |
| LLM RPG | Open the site in a browser | Nothing for the first five turns |
With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds free credits. The current plans are on the pricing page.
How to start a Wonderland story tonight
If playing inside the book sounds like your kind of game, this is the whole path from nothing to your first scene.
- Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
- Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
- Download the book. Get Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the
Looking-Glass from Project Gutenberg, as a
.txtor.epubfile. - Upload it. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play, and you are shown what the reading costs before anything is spent.
- Make your character. A gardener who is tired of painting roses, a juror at the trial who actually wants to hear the evidence, a second child who fell down the hole an hour after Alice. You are a new person in the story’s world, so you can be anyone.
- Type what you do. “I ask the Caterpillar what he thinks I am.” “I tell the Queen the croquet hoop has wandered off again.” The narrator answers in the book’s voice and remembers what you did, including whom you offended.
When another Alice game is the better choice
Be honest about the evening you want. If you want a video game with combat and a dark, beautiful Wonderland, Alice: Madness Returns is the one to buy. If you are planning a party, take the games straight from the book, because Carroll already designed them. And if you have never read the novels, start there, because they are short, free and better than you remember.
A written game fits a different moment: you have just closed the book, the Cheshire Cat’s grin is still hanging in the air, and you want to walk into that garden as someone of your own. That is the moment it was built for.