Habromania demo preview — A different kind of madness in Wonderland

Discovering an Indie on Instagram or X always makes me feel on top of the world, like I’m in a secret club of a few people that are patiently waiting for updates. However, I would be discrediting Habromania if I called it a hidden gem, as its recent success in its Kickstarter cemented its funding in merely a day. Habromania is still not as well known as most Indies, but it's one to watch as it develops. Sydney Collings is an artist who, along with a small team, has been drawing up concepts for an Alice in Wonderland side-scrolling RPG that twists the otherwise magical tale into an intoxicating dream/nightmare set in liminal spaces and with a plot that can get bloody and serious quite quickly.

What sells Habromania at a first glance is undoubtedly its art style, as there’s a certain lifelessness and spookiness to the design of the inhabitants of Wonderland. Habromania itself is defined as ‘a form of delusional insanity characterized by cheerful or joyous delusions,’ which fits perfectly with this adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Characters have small beady eyes and ragged features like moth-bitten clothes and scruffy hair. From the start, Sydney focuses on the madness of the world rather than its more dreamlike qualities. Other adaptations of the same source material have attempted this certain tone, like Tim Burton’s film duology, but made it all just too gross and was geared more towards a fantastical adventure.  Habromania seems to know its source material and the potential it has in conveying the unordinary.

I’m also incredibly hopeful for the score, as Sydney has been using slowed-down versions of tracks from Over The Garden Wall for inspiration for her own reels on Instagram. The track used in the demo fits that vibe and feel whilst being original, so I hope we get that similar vibe throughout.

Sydney Collins also delightfully plays around with the preconceived  notions of the main characters like Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts. They aren’t just one-dimensional repeats but have messed-up pasts that bleed into Wonderland. This is what truly captured my attention, as I just wanted to know more and more. What happened in that terrible accident that involved Alice and her brother? Why is the Mad Hatter obsessed with the Queen of Hearts? These new questions are insatiable as Habromania develops its characters and adds a more human elements to them.

The demo itself is sadly really short, with about 40 minutes of playtime, but it’s this candy trail I have been following that makes Habromania better and better. You play through the beginning section of Chapter 1, where Alice has just woken up at the bottom of a very deep hole on top of a stone altar—the symbolism already has me gagged. You can control Alice, which includes traversal, picking items up, and interacting with objects to solve puzzles. It seems sections will be formulaic with a bunch of threads you have to follow to end up solving the main puzzle, but my first impression of the puzzling was satisfactory. It’s a simple ‘find a bunch of objects and put them in certain places,’ but there’s also a combination system where you can combine multiple objects to create a new one. You’ll need an eagle eye to spot objects you can pick up, as the backgrounds are pre-rendered, but I never found it too difficult; I just had to sweep an area a couple of times to find everything I needed.

The puzzling itself is nothing too difficult, but what I found put a fun and interesting twist on it was Alice’s commentary, narrated by high-pitched piano key noises. She exhibits typical Alice traits like being a bit ditzy, but this rendition of Alice is witty and not afraid to do some questionable things. At the moment, we haven’t been able to interact with other characters, so I can’t comment much on dialogue.

The environments themselves are gorgeous, picturing the bottom of the hole as mounds of earth crammed full of lost or thrown-away items and an overgrown garden with statues of Greek goddesses. Both areas have tons of small details to peer at, making the world feel alive yet haunting. Habromania is already so confident in balancing beauty and liminality and makes me excited for what visions the devs have for other iconic locations in Wonderland.

The only noticeable area for improvement is character animations; Alice only has her walking and picking object up animations, but they feel a bit clunky. I look forward to more concise interactions, so she doesn’t feel so much like a robot.

Alas, Habromania’s demo is a short and sweet time but one worth checking out if any of this has piqued your interest. To my delight, it will be entering Early Access, and we will be seeing a Chapter 1 release date in the next couple of years. The devs already seem to know what they want to do with their material, as the Kickstarter details a lot of what they want to work on, including multiple endings and console support. I just hope support remains strong in such a long development period.

For more news on Habromania, check out their Kickstarter and Sydney's Instagram for updates to the game’s development.

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