• Price: $6.99 USD
• Developer: Sky Bear Games
• Publisher: Ratalaika Games
• Release Date: January 27, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by PR Hound on behalf of Sky Bear Games and Ratalaika Games. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Alice in Wonderland-inspired stories are always fun, so I was curiouser and curiouser to see how they’d represent the world in Wonderland Nights: White Rabbit’s Diary. As the title would suggest, you play as the White Rabbit, and he’s got a lot of work to do.

In this portrayal of Wonderland, there are four kingdoms: Hearts, Spades, Clubs, and Diamonds. Every year one of the kingdoms will host a Wonderland Summit, an event where they discuss and vote on topics related to their political and economic agendas. This time the Kingdom of Hearts is hosting the summit, and the poor White Rabbit is stuck organizing everything. Unfortunately, he forgot to prepare for this extremely important event, but the Cheshire Cat helps him out by giving him a codex to fill with guests’ preferences.

There are twelve people attending the summit: three royal representatives from each of the four kingdoms. At the moment Hearts is at war with Clubs, while Spades is in the middle of a conflict with Diamonds. It may be best to keep people from opposing kingdoms away from each other, although certain characters will get along okay with a so-called enemy and despise someone from their allied kingdom.

During the summit the royals will make decisions on one topic per day over the course of four days. The topics include war, magic, trade, and their borders. Each attendee naturally has their own opinion on the items on the agenda, and opinions may differ among people from the same kingdom. (Their countrymen may not realize that their votes are going a different way, as the votes seem to be anonymous.)

The goal is to arrange the daily schedules in a way that makes people more likely to vote for what you want. You have to pair two people together for six activities each day, and I liked that they gave players two different style choices for the planning menu to accommodate our preferences. People will have two activities they enjoy, two that they’re indifferent about, and two that they dislike. I wasn’t entirely sure how the activities impacted the proceedings; perhaps if they enjoy their activity they are more likely to agree to vote a certain way? I think the political opinions had the biggest influence on participants, but the activity and partner you choose for them certainly contribute to the result of the vote.

You won’t know who or what each guest likes when you play through the story for the first time. The codex will automatically register what each person thinks about their partner and the activity where you placed them, and the information you gain will roll over to all subsequent playthroughs. It gets easier to plan things when you have the codex filled out. I did have trouble keeping track of who likes what when I went between the codex and the planning screen, so I created some graphics to serve as a guide (see the bottom of this page).

After you decide on who goes where, you get a very brief look at what each pair thinks of your event-planning choices as well as the upcoming vote. They’ll try to convince the other person to vote the same way. I wish that these scenes were a bit longer, because there were some interesting ideas for the plot and relationships between characters. Everyone has a secret that they don’t want the others to discover; in the very beginning we discover that Hera, the Queen of Hearts, is having an affair. 😱💔 You’ll also find out that not everyone is who they say they are…

I liked where they were going with the story ideas. Hera’s mother, the previous Queen of Hearts, apparently became so angry about Alice’s adventures in Wonderland that she died of a heart attack. Now there’s a lot of discussion about the possibility of Alice returning. Hera is still furious about – and frightened of – Alice. There are also rumors that the much-feared Jabberwock will return.

There’s a lot of drama among these royals, even with a fairly short playtime for each playthrough. Most of the characters are not terribly likable, but I really liked the White Rabbit and Solomon, the King of Spades, who was a famous magician known as the Blue Caterpillar before he earned the right to be king. I also wanted to know more about Catherine, the Queen of Clubs, and the Cheshire Cat. And even though I didn’t like these three as people, the interactions that the King of Clubs has with the King of Diamonds and Jorge also had potential.

I think if this was just a bit longer the character development would have been better, but I did enjoy testing out the different combinations of people and activities to see the different endings/CGs. I believe that most of the endings were related to the results of all of the votes, but there were some that required specific combinations of character interactions as well. I wasn’t able to figure a few of those out on my own, so a hint system may have been nice for those CGs.

Overall, Wonderland Nights: White Rabbit’s Diary has a lot of good features. The dialogue is voiced, which I enjoyed; I thought that each voice worked well for the character they played. The art style felt like it was well-suited to the eccentricity of Wonderland, and I especially appreciated the background details (such as the above topiary shaped like Queen Hera on the croquet pitch). And with such creative interpretations of Wonderland royalty, I’d be willing to go “down the rabbit hole” or “through the looking glass” again to experience a continuation of these storylines in the potential sequels teased by the developer on their website.

8/10

For some assistance with the game, click to the next page below. 🐰

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