Jane Jensen's Next Game Is Moebius
And still they come. Jane Jensen's Kickstarter has been going for over a week now, and is steadily bringing in the cash. She's after $300,000, and has almost reached $173,000 with a month to go. It seems pretty likely she'll hit it, but what is it going to be? Well, a cannily released email has finally made me take notice by saying it's a "spiritual successor" to Gabriel Knight, and it's called Moebius.
I'm just going to be nice and assume she means GK1 and 2, and not the skyscraper of excrement that was Gabriel Knight 3. The recently formed Pinkerton Road studio has been created for the project, and bizarrely people were giving money to the KickStarter before it was even decided what game was being made - something that made more sense when it was "a Tim Schafer comedy", perhaps. However, via the voting of early backers, the game is decided. It's Moebius.
Which is a "metaphysical sci-fi thriller in the vein of Fringe", as well as influenced by Jensen's own novel, Dante's Equation and the Gab Knight games, and is of course a point and click adventure. It's to be about an antiquities dealer, Malachi Rector, who has a knack for "sensing the soul of an object". Brrr. After his shop is burned down, he takes on a job from a millionaire wanting him to travel the world and investigate a series of events, documenting them as he goes.
"The first event is the death of a young woman in Venice, who was found hanging from a bridge. As Rector investigates her life, he soon realizes that this beautiful and talented young woman -- and the interrupted path of her life -- had great hidden significance. It appears that Amber Dexter and his associates are playing with the fabric of life in a way Rector never imagined possible. Even he, Rector himself, is part of a larger pattern. Malachi Rector must figure out who is doing what -- and whether their intentions are for good or ill -- before he can decide whether to play his pre-scripted role or try to change the outcome."
They're aiming to have the game finished by March next year, should the funding be raised, and of course the KickStarter page will be endlessly updated. Although good grief, the main video slightly forgets the most important rule of getting people's money: bloody well tell them what it's about within the first, say, million hours?
But to cut to the chase for you, they're attempting something called CSG, which stands for Community Supported Gaming. The plan is, if you pledge $50 up front, you'll get all the games they'll make in a year. Which this year doesn't seem a great deal, with there being only one game planned. But they hope to become a bigger studio, making multiple projects at a time. Here's the Moebius announcement:
