Moebius is not as bad some of the reviews say but it’s not that good either, it’s a bog-standard adventure game that does very little to make itself memorable. It’s a real disappointment considering this is Jane Jensen’s newest game. Jensen’s previous games, the Gabriel Knight series and the more recent Gray Matter, were quality written games with likable characters that got you immersed in the games and their stories and are some of the best adventure games around. Moebius is not this, while the basic plot is interesting enough at first the main characters are really bland and the side characters are all horrible people but not in an interesting way. The puzzles are alright for the most part, but the last section of the game is a terrible slog of padding and occasional trial and error puzzles. The graphics aren’t good, but they were on a budget so I can easily forgive it. I didn’t run into any glitches so it’s solidly designed in that regard.

Ultimately I don’t really regret buying it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There are more than enough recent adventure games that are far better that you could play instead. (Broken Age, the Blackwell Series, Kentucky Route Zero, Gone Home, Walking Dead, and Wolf Among Us just to name a few) Not to mention that you’re also better off playing the Gabriel Knights and Gray Matter, the former you can buy on GOG, the latter on both GOG and Steam. You can do a lot worse when it comes to adventure games so I would only suggest getting this game if you’re really hurting for adventure games and it’s on sale for cheap. Overall though Moebius is just really mediocre and easily forgettable; for the average person I’d say skip it.

A game where pretty much everything went wrong.

It's impossible to discuss Moebius without sounding cruel, but they say honesty is its own reward, so here we go.

First of all, the game is hideous. Not just "not very pretty", not "outdated", but positively hideous. The kitschy 2D art is sort of acceptable if you close one eye; the poor 3D models and inexplicably terrible animations, however, are not. Either the artists are aliens who never saw a real human being, or they are simply people stuck doing a job they have absolutely no talent for. The ugliness permeating the game is unbearable.

But okay, looks aren't everything; let's be mature and look past that. How does it play? Well, badly. Everything is stilted, unresponsive and seems to be plodding through a thick layer of mud; even the simplest actions take half an eternity punctuated by random pauses. And speaking of actions, let's discuss puzzles. By and large, they are oversimplified to a point that's almost insulting, and yet still manage to make little to no sense:
1. There is an object lying in the corner of a dark alley. Malachi will happily come right next to it, but won't pick it up, because it's too dark, and you need to fix a streetlamp first. It's a brick.
2. A cut lanyard is fixed with superglue. Lanyard. Superglue. Seriously.
A bizarre addition to the traditional formula is that Malachi won’t pick up objects until he knows where he’d like to use them, with precisely one result: backtracking guaranteed, which really doesn’t play nice with the lumbering pace of it all. And dear lord, the whole thing ends with an honest to goodness maze. In an adventure game. I thought the nineties taught us never to do that again, but apparently I was mistaken. So. Dull.

But alright, alright, who cares about puzzles. Characters and story, that's what adventure games are all about! – Well, that is the worst thing. When I first learned what the overreaching plot was, I burst out laughing. Not because it is particularly funny, but because it is absolutely ludicrous. Sure, Gabriel Knight 3 and Gray Matter got sort of silly towards the end, but Moebius gets to that point about one third in and never stops going until it dissolves in a raging torrent of crazy (and painfully sexist to boot). And as far as characters are concerned, while I sort of want to appreciate the romance angle that’s going on in here, everyone in the game is so very wooden, whether it’s talking about the models, voice acting or writing, that it’s like watching two robots trying to learn what this “emotions” thing was all about. And failing, just like everything else in Moebius is wont to do.

Oh, well. I backed this on Kickstarter; clearly, nobody's perfect.

EDITED A FEW YEARS LATER: I was randomly rereading my old reviews and while I still mosty stand behind this one, the personal attack was mean and uncalled for. I considered editing it out, but then decided against it. But I do wish to say that I regret it and that I belatedly apologise.

I consider myself a big fan of Jane Jensen's and classical adventure games in general (as you can probably tell by my choice of the Steam avatar), but I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. It rehashes all the adventure game tropes and clichés (not in a good way) and much of the puzzle design is flawed or illogical. Most crucially, though,I found myself getting bored with the plot and couldn't care enough to keep playing. I never got to finish the game as much as I wanted to because it felt like a waste of time. It simply wasn't fun or engaging enough. In a genre of games that specializes in storytelling, I'd say that's a big minus. The characters (especially the main character Malachi Rector) are unlikeable, the dialogues are uninspired, and the animation is stilted. For the longest time, I seriously wondered to myself if the main character was supposed to be a hunchback by design because of his very unnatrual-looking posture. It turned out it was just bad character modeling. You'd think they would invest some time and effort in designing him to at least NOT look like a disabled person. He's only the protagonist of the game. That you have to stare at for the ENTIRE duration of the game.
In the meantime, I will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of GK 20th Anniversary Edition.

My verdict: 2/5

So this game was developed by the same studio that worked on the excellent Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller. If you played that game, chances are you really liked it and are looking forward to this one. That's why I have to warn you that if you expect Moebius to be Erica Reed's spiritual successor, you'll be incredibly disappointed.

It pains me to see that the amazing Jane Jensen worked on Moebius. Nothing about it works. The graphics are terrible, the animations are atrocious, the conversation options are there just for the sake of you having to talk to people, and the puzzles are downright boring. There's even constant backtracking involved, which in this genre is unforgivable.

The story might seem promising at first, and sure, the deductive powers of Malachi are an interesting element, but that's about it. The more you progress, the more you realize this game is not going to take you for a fun ride. It's boring, it's painfully slow, and it ends on an anticlimactic note. Oh, Erica Reed, how I miss you!

I didn't even get a chance to finish Moebius, due to a very annoying game-breaking bug I ran into during one of the final chapters (Dominique's condo, for the record). I really wasn't motivated enough to go back to a previous save, as the mere thought of having to go through what felt like a very long, uninteresting, muddy slog all over again wasn't exactly appealing. The main issue with this game is not the ugly graphics (I really don't care much about how a game looks in terms of prettiness), nor the wooden animations (again, I couldn't care less), but the awful combination of both a poor array of very shallow puzzles and a core game mechanic which appears to be totally disrespectful of the player's time - and intelligence, if not already offended by the extreme dullness of said 'puzzles'.


Malachi is not a likeable character by any means: he's a self-centred, delicate snowflake addicted to Xanax who somehow tries to buy his way through pretty much everything, from relationships to personal health. In his twisted and convoluted world, it makes sense not being interested in politics while deliberately working for a major secretive government agency, while dealing with politicians of all sorts (but hey, he just does it for the money!), while it also makes sense jumping to odd and sometimes sexist conclusions about women, who are all depicted as either shameless gold-diggers or vain, men-hungry sluts. She's wearing a bright pink cardigan and orange lipstick? She must be desperate for a man! She's wearing thrift store clothes and listening to music from an outdated cd-player? She must be willing to flirt with some sleazy politician in exchange for a brand new ipod! Or maybe she's a retired old woman who had to sell everything to make ends meet? Well no problema signora, let's buy you an expensive necklace which looks exactly like the one you had to sell, so you'll just wear it and keep on indulging in your past memories while thinking of me as a true gentleman. The not-so-covert attempt to sneak some gay story into all of this comes out as awkward, as the numerous innuendos about Malachi's dubious sexuality when paired with his sudden attachment to the 'Warrior' David and compared with his low opinion of the rest of the human genre.

I must admit that Malachi's snark and cynical remarks, together with his funny compartmentalization of the world, are worth the occasional laugh, but most of the time he stands out as a plain hypocrite. The fact he often appears to lack any kind of basic logic to solve basic puzzles (lanyard and glue - as mentioned by someone - seriously?), while pretending to be such a brilliant Savant expert on almost everything, is not really his fault tho, isn't it?

And here's where probably the main criticism for such a badly written story must be credited to Jensen, who somehow tried to present a universe populated by horrible people (or just an America populated by snotty Newyorkers and the rest of the elitarian world filled with poncy ♥♥♥♥♥), all justified in their awfulness by this 'Moebius theory', which links all of these ♥♥♥♥♥ together in some mystical pre-destined magical chain of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, bound to repeat forever and ever.

However, plot and characters aside, the worst part is the above mentioned core mechanic: the game expects you to move (very slowly) back and forth through locations in order to retrieve items which are essential for the progress of the story; too bad these are often objects you already noticed somewhere but were prevented from picking up (Malachi will say he doesn't need them 'now'). This translates into a lot of backtracking, and into a lot of not-fun time. In some cases, items that weren't there previously will appear out of thin air after you exhausted all of the possible locations where they could possibly be found (like when Malachi needs 'something to illuminate the Catacombs', and suddenly a lantern appears in Le Chateau Campagne). Not to mention that very annoying instance where you have to climb a rope in Malachi's apartment to reach a balcony, and you're greeted by a very tedious mini pseudo-QTE thing, which was totally out of character and unpleasantly unexpected, for how the game instructed you on game interactions thus far. Puzzles are generally very simple and don't require this fantastic amount of thinking, some other times they're just absurd. The bug I encountered toward the end of the game occured becuase I failed to complete some actions (read: provide Dominique with all the goodies she wanted from me) in a very specific order - and I wonder what could have happened had I inadvertently chosen to follow a similar 'wrong order' in the previous chapters.

As much as I appreciated Jensen's previous works, I cannot really recommend this one, as it's definitively sub-par.

Not as enjoyable to me as Cognition (a similar adventure game by same devs).

The characters are much less likable, the story is less enjoyable, and the ending was lackluster (I was expecting some epic time and space interdimensional showdown, not "ok hostages rescued good jorb.").

And one gameplay mechanism really irked me: you're not allowed to pick up anything until you've interacted with the puzzle that requires it.
e.g.: See an oil can in the middle of the road, try to pick it up, "I have no use for that now." Several screens later, see some rusty gears, go back to oil can, try to pick it up, "I have no use for that now." Go back to rusty gears, rub Malichi's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ face in them, try to turn them, "hmm, if only I had some oil." Go back to oil can, try to pick it up, "aha, I can use this oil on the gears!".

Another gameplay aspect that was unenjoyable was the find-a-historical-match guessing game that you're repeatedly forced to play, that feels more like it belongs in an edutainment title like Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego.

Industry veteran Jane Jensen joins forces with Phoenix Online to deliver a new adventure. The result?

Contrived writing and formulaic characters (not exactly surprising if you've read that Jensen interview on Gamasutra...), mostly vapid ideas, some daft puzzles, but clearly the most eminent problem lies with the Holmes deduction process analogue mechanic: it probably sounded a great idea on paper, in practice the solution is either a) blatantly obvious, akin to compiling a simple form b) total guesswork: "what did they have in mind when putting together this trope-y character?"

The execution looks budget, with the usual issues stemming from the use of 3D characters; it's not intolerable, more like excusable, what with the KS campaign having raised slightly more than 400 grand, but definitely noticeable. At some point the game was updated to Unity 5, and it appears the job was likely done hurriedly, leaving behind very obvious bugs. There's also some blurry textures here and there.

Noteworthy: while the game is under most respects almost exactly what you would expect from a modern adventure in terms of general experience, it does bring back some old fashioned design decisions nobody really missed in the first place; in one instance, it combines them like inventory items to unleash maximum mayhem on the unsuspecting player: the Rubber Tree lesson went out of the window here in favor of a throwback to the heyday of Sierra, and there's no manner of autosaving or checkpointing, so it's definitely possible to be forced into replaying a whole chapter (or two). If you hated Resonance for not saving close enough to the ending, this one may elicit long strings of insults.

Nevertheless, I couldn't muster a real dislike for the game; it shares elements with Cognition, and indeed many Phoenix people have worked on this one as well; but past the opening and on to the second episode, that one already seemed a better game than Moebius.

I would only recommend this game to specific types of players: the indie adventure game renaissance train may have made a short stop at this station, however, it has also long left the platform.

The current version is extremely buggy and it is impossible to finish the game as it freezes at several points. The developer has released save games to get you past the broken parts but you will miss out on much of the story and there are bugs not covered by these saves. Don't buy this game until at least the next update!

Would have loved being able to recommend this game. The plot is interesting(though not stellar). The puzzles are acceptable. I can overlook the early 2000 animations. I can overlook some of the control issues. But playing for a bit and then encountering a game breaking bug (the same one described in: http://steamcommunity.com/app/264520/discussions/0/617321352093942871/

Sorry, that is simply not acceptable. This game has been out for months. Having a bug that pretty much ends your playthrough there and then is acceptable if the game is just out. Not if the game has been out for months.
Had I paid the full price for this one, I would be fuming.
As it is, I can only advise you to stay far, far away, unless ALL bugs have been resolved. When that happens, this game will likely be OK.

TL;DR the story has potential, but suffers from mediocre dialog, and flat characters. The animations and character graphics are bad. The puzzles are varied with some interesting mechanics, but not necessarily hard. It has a solid length.

Recommended to people who really like adventures and people who can get past some bad dialog.

Well backed the game on kickstarter, played through it.. The graphics are rather bad (or the characters are), and the animations are awful.

That would be ok if the story was solid, but it really isn't. The idea is good, the premise is ok, but the execution and dialog is medicore. Well the dialog is at times really bad, corny and too predictable.

The characters are awkward but not in a good way, and they are rather two dimensional and uninteresting. I'm reminded of the scientist Joshua from the Runaway series, though perhaps not that irritating (really felt that it hurt runaway 2 that he had a more prominent role).

The protagonist Malachi is not very likable, but that is intentional. He suffer from bland/poorly executed character development. It is a bit like the classic windows progress bar, it comes in weird chunks and it is not entirely sure how far it has to go. The character development is a classic "Taming of the Shrew", but then again what isn't.

The interaction between characters are bland and lack depth. There is a weird chemistry between the main characters, which "left unexplained" but with rather heavy suggestions. I would have prefered if the story either had aimed at Watson/Holmes buddies relation, or a more serious approach with deeper meaning.

The FITA and the baddie seems like they have been slapped together in a hurry, as they do not offer much other than trying to frame the story.

The story is rather predictable once the scene is set, with a few twists here and there. The last chapter feels both rushed and drawn out, especially the last puzzle since the highlight feature is turned off and it suffers from the slow transitions between scenes.

I found the puzzles in general to be quite nice, with good variations. I did get stuck a couple of times which is nice enough, but for the most part they were pretty straight forward. Some of the puzzles does suffer a bit from "no that is not the right order" syndrome. Such as why do I need to climb an object in order to get to the object i'm interested in, especially as Malachi says "I need to climb box first", please just do it. It is however just minor inconveniences.

I really like the compare/analyze historical people mechanic, that is the guess who this person is puzzles, not the overly negative, shallow and nonsensical "look at that tramp" analysis of the characters in order to get the obvious clue for conversations.

The historical comparison is a nice mechanic, and there are a lot of interesting historical facts in them , well also some mythical "facts". It worked for me all the way up until the last part of the game, where the historical characters began to be too modern, and not enough "space" to support the idea behind the moebius pattern.

Some reviews on the net talks about game breaking glitches, I did not run into any, but the slow and glitchy animations were a nuisance at times.

The music is quite good and provide a nice ambiance.

All in all Moebius has a lot of interesting ideas and mechanics, but suffer from poor execution, shallow characters and not enough polish. As a point and click adventure game there are two areas you should focus on, the story, the characters and the puzzles, and both characters and story feel rough.

I do not regret having backed the game, but do hope that Pinkerton Road will listen to the critique and do better with their next game(s) because the potential is there. I know it was created on a tight budget, and for that I can forgive a lot of things and i would probably score it at 5/10 leaning at 6/10 due to the analysis puzzles.