My memory of Alice was that it was more of an excuse for them to show off interesting visuals and didn't actually have much in the way of game play mechanics to it, but I never got very far. Maybe I should look it up again and see.
It wasn't the most cerebral of games, I'll grant you that. But it did set a good atmosphere with the visuals (which you'd described) and audio. It had a weird creepy charm to it.
I tend to get bored of games quite quickly but Alice was one of the few which kept me engaged to the end.
