A video game based on author Frank Beddor‘s best-selling “The Looking Glass Wars” novels is set to launch this summer as the first push in a plan to further expand the franchise across mediums.
Titled “The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards,” the deck-building game is releasing tied to the 20th anniversary of Beddor’s trilogy, which reimagines Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” as the suppressed history of Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland.
Per the description for the new game, “Departing from traditional ‘Alice in Wonderland’ whimsy, ‘The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards’ invites players back into Beddor’s war-torn vision of the realm. This single-player, strategic deck builder blends the DNA of tabletop classics like Rummikub and Mahjong with modern tactical depth. Players must navigate a darker, high-stakes world where iconic characters are re-imagined as elite operatives and every suit is fighting for the soul of Wonderland.”
As Beddor preps to release the new video game amid the novel trilogy’s 20th anniversary, he’s also plotting a new “Looking Glass Wars” comic book and launching a Kickstarter campaign for “The Looking Glass Wars: Visions of Wonderland,” “a museum-quality artbook” to debut tied to the game.
And there’s more in the works.
“I’m also working on the musical and the television show, both of which I’m doing out of the U.K,” Beddor told Variety. “The hope is to do the musical on the West End, and the television show out of London, as well. There’s some exciting things happening on that front and there’ll be new announcements. But I have a terrific team on the musical. And one of my inspirations was ‘Wicked,’ because Gregory Maguire, years ago, I called him for some advice, and he said, ‘Oh, you should come up to San Francisco. They’re turning my book into a musical.’ So I went up and I saw the first presentation of it. And then he called me afterwards, and he says, ‘You should start thinking about the musical. You’ll make more money on the musical.’ So it’s just taken me 20 years to get around doing all these other things.”
The “Looking Glass Wars” game will offer quest-based progression system, where players take on a ladder of more than 140 escalating challenges and progress isn’t scrapped upon defeat.
“The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards” will launch on Steam this summer with exact release date still to come. A playable demo will be released during the Steam Next Fest in June.
Additional game features include:
- A Puzzle-First Strategy: Success is driven by pattern recognition and smart sequencing. Players must adapt to the draw of the cards to meet unique quest constraints.
- The “House of Cards” Meta: Use Imagination Points to construct a literal House of Cards, allowing you to unlock new abilities and influence when your most powerful cards appear in your deck.
- Persistent Progression: Every victory moves you forward through a complete 15-hour+ long campaign toward a definitive conclusion.
- Suit Allegiance: Suits and loyalty matter. Aligning your growing skills and powers with the Heart, Club, Spade or Diamond families will unlock a deeper mastery of your House of Cards.
“The Looking Glass Wars: House of Cards” was developed by veteran game designer Richard Leibowitz in collaboration with Beddor’s Automatic Publishing and Automatic Pictures, which Beddor launched to develop original IP across formats including novels, graphic novels, animation, stage, screen and games.
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