Near the start of the month, celebrated game designer Jane Jensen talked to Gamezebo about her plans to return to making graphic adventures after spending nearly a decade making hidden object games. Happily, Jensen moved quickly, and now her first project is on the table: Moebius, a sci-fi thriller that should feel like coming home for fans of Jensen’s work on the Gabriel Knight games.
Near the start of the month, celebrated game designer Jane Jensen talked to Gamezebo about her plans to return to making graphic adventures after spending nearly a decade making hidden object games. Happily, Jensen moved quickly, and now her first project is on the table: Moebius, a sci-fi thriller that should feel like coming home for fans of Jensen’s work on the Gabriel Knight games.
Moebius centers around an antiques hunter-and-dealer named Malachi Rector. Malachi is no dusty old coot, though: this young, bristly enthusiast can sense the “souls” of antiques, and his passion and knack for his trade attracts the wrong kind of attention.
After his antiques store is destroyed in a fire, Malachi is hired by a millionaire named Amber Dexter to investigate and document a series of events. One such event is the death of a woman in Venice, who is found hanging from a bridge. Not surprisingly, the reasons for the woman’s death fall back into a tangled, seemingly endless web that Dexter and Malachi are both a part of.
Moebius is a third-person point-and-click adventure with 2D visuals reminiscent of a graphic novel. It features two gameplay modes: a “Casual Adventure” that includes a simplified interface, hints, and a hotspot revealer, and “True Adventure,” which puts the screws to genre veterans.
Neither Jensen nor her new studio, Pinkerton Road Studio, has the rights to Gabriel Knight, but given Moebius‘s mix of adventure, history, mystery, and fantasy, the game might be thought of as a spiritual successor to Sierra On-Line’s beloved series.
Moebius is being funded via Kickstarter. The campaign is off to a good start, but it never hurts to help, especially if you’re a fan of quality adventure games. Provided the Kickstarter is successful, we should see Moebius sometime by March 2013. Stay tuned to Gamezebo for continuing updates on Ms. Jensen’s projects!
