A video game based on author Frank Bedder’s best-selling novel “The Looking Glass Wars” is set to launch this summer in the first push of plans to further expand the series across mediums.
The deck-building game, titled “The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards,” is being released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Vedder trilogy, which reimagines Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” as a repressed history of Princess Alice’s Heart of Wonderland.
According to the new game’s description, “In a departure from the traditional Alice in Wonderland whimsy, The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards transports players to Vedder’s war-torn world. This single-player strategic deck builder has the DNA of tabletop classics like Rumikub and Mahjong. and the depth of modern tactics. Players must navigate a darker, high-stakes world featuring iconic characters, reimagined as elite operatives, all fighting for the soul of Wonderland.”
While preparing to release a new video game in the midst of the novel trilogy’s 20th anniversary, Bedder is also planning a new “Through the Looking Glass” comic book and has launched a Kickstarter campaign for “Through the Looking Glass Wars: Visions of Wonderland,” a “museum-quality art book” that will debut in conjunction with the game.
More work in progress.
“I’m also working on a musical and a TV show, both outside of the UK,” Vedder told Variety. “The hope is to do a musical in the West End and also do a TV show in London. There are some exciting things happening on that front and there will be new announcements. But I have a great team around musicals, and one of my inspirations is It was Wicked, because when Gregory Maguire called him years ago for advice, he said, “Oh, you should come to San Francisco. They’re making a musical out of my book.” So I went there and saw that first presentation. Then he called me and said, “You should start thinking about doing musicals.” You can make more money doing musicals. ” So it took me 20 years to get all these things done. ”
The “Looking Glass Wars” game offers a quest-based progression system, where players take on a ladder of over 140 tiered challenges, and progress is not discarded upon defeat.
The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards will be available on Steam this summer, with an exact release date still to be determined. A playable demo is expected to be released during Steam Next Fest in June.
Additional game features include:
Puzzle-first strategy: Success depends on pattern recognition and smart sequencing. Players must adapt their card draws to meet quest-specific constraints. “House of Cards” Meta: Use Imagination Points to literally build a house of cards, allowing you to unlock new abilities and influences when the most powerful cards appear in your deck. Persistent Progression: Each victory advances you through a complete campaign of over 15 hours towards the final conclusion. Suit Loyalty: Suits and loyalty are important. Master the House of Cards even deeper by aligning your growing skills and powers with the Hearts, Clubs, Spades, or Diamond families.
The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards was developed by veteran game designer Lee Thomas in collaboration with Beddor’s Automatic Publishing and Automatic Pictures, a company launched by Beddor to develop original IP across formats such as novels, graphic novels, animation, stage, screen and games.
