Curiouser and curiouser.
We often talk about videogame bastardisations of films, but games' relationship with literature isn't often pored over - mostly because games rarely dare to engage with, plagiarise or sully written source material with the same wanton abandon.
It's wonderful, then, to see that Etranges Libellules' interpretation of Alice in Wonderland has more to do with Lewis Carroll then Tim Burton; visually, the game draws on Burton's surreal caricature, but its cleverness, humour and wonderful sense of nonsense are true to Carroll's twisted fairytale.
It's beautifully presented from the menu screen onwards, where wide-eyed little Alice chases a purple-jacketed white rabbit down the rabbit hole and into the Underland below. Option screens are hidden behind doors, which you knock upon twice to get Alice to throw them open with visible enthusiasm. Characters are distinctively designed, delineated in thick, Okami-esque ink strokes, and have a visual affinity with Burton's earlier work, if not with the film that's ostensibly its inspiration.
