KickStarter Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road Studio & Moebius Closed Down

[Magic User]

I'm a bit late to the party here, but I finally got around to playing it and and yes, the animations are fucking disturbing. I used to think this was an overreaction on the part of graphics fags but they are truly distracting in the worst kind of way. Rector walks and moves like a hunched version of C3PO if you can believe it. I didn't notice anything so bad about the other characters though.

I have to say I feel guilty because as a backer I had access to the beta and the forums, and yet I never even bother to check it out once. If I did I would have commented on it quite vehemently. I wonder if during the whole development process there wasn't a wise soul who pointed out that this needed fixing? This would have saved this game a lot of unnecessary bad rep. I can't believe something so simple and yet so damaged went unnoticed. My impression is that the devs did not notice it and that nobody pointed it out to them. How else this would be explained?

I'm still in Venice, and so far I have to say I am enjoying the game(minus the distracting animations).

 

[Ringhausen]

I'd guess they didn't have any good animators on board but even Erica Reed didn't look this bad. The occasional humor was the only thing I enjoyed from this game.

Did JJ ever tell backers why she dumped the Russian studio or that her stepdaughter (the one in the kickstarter video) has cancer?

 

[Magic User]

I'd guess they didn't have any good animators on board but even Erica Reed didn't look this bad. The occasional humor was the only thing I enjoyed from this game.

I don't think so, from what I have played so far the other characters have okayish animations.

That is why I'm wondering if no backer played the beta and voiced concern for this... I mean, how can something like this slip by? It would have been quite easy to fix it and seeing the main character model like that detracts from the whole game.

Did JJ ever tell backers why she dumped the Russian studio or that her stepdaughter (the one in the kickstarter video) has cancer?

That is sad, pretty much everyone following Jensen since Gray Matter remembers that girl from videos and else. She is very pretty and a talented singer.

Jensen dumped the Russian studio because she befriended the guys who did Erica Reed and liked their work. As for not announcing that her stepdaughter has cancer... well, I guess you don't expose your personal life.

 

[Blackthorne]

The Russian studio, as I've heard (this is by no means fact), basically crumbled. As for Raleigh Holmes, last I knew, she was doing well with treatments and actually performed the Moebius song in-between treatments.


Bt

 

[J_C]

Fucking graphic whores! Who cares about the stupid animations?

 

[Redlands]

The Russian studio, as I've heard (this is by no means fact), basically crumbled. As for Raleigh Holmes, last I knew, she was doing well with treatments and actually performed the Moebius song in-between treatments.


Bt

Jane really, really has either bad taste or terrible luck when it comes to aligning with dev teams after Sierra went bust.

 

[Delterius]

I can admit that in terms of gameplay and puzzles, this blows Broken Age out of the water.

This is just in: If you say a variant of this in 500 more threads of the Adventure forum, you shall be freed of the Plantavatar Curse. Maybe. Divination is hard.

 

[J_C]

I can admit that in terms of gameplay and puzzles, this blows Broken Age out of the water.

This is just in: If you say a variant of this in 500 more threads of the Adventure forum, you shall be freed of the Plantavatar Curse. Maybe. Divination is hard.

Hah, knowing the mods on the Codex, they would let me say this in a 1000 threads, and they would be trolling me by leaving the plant avatar. No thank you.

 

[Delterius]

Hell, they might give you a Tim Schaefer hater avatar. Again Divination is hard.

 

[Magic User]

Fucking graphic whores! Who cares about the stupid animations?

The is game is good so far(haven't finished it yet) but yes, the animation of the main character is very distracting because it is so bad. Rector moves like Jar Jar Binks.

 

[Abelian]

Rector moves like Jar Jar Binks.

Evidently, someone misunderstood the advice make to the adventure game less like Sierra and more like LucasArts .

 

[J_C]

Fucking graphic whores! Who cares about the stupid animations?

The is game is good so far(haven't finished it yet) but yes, the animation of the main character is very distracting because it is so bad. Rector moves like Jar Jar Binks.

I know, I myself realised it in the first seconds. But come on, one can overcome this distraction quickly. Because otherwise the game is good.

 

[Magic User]

Well, have I said otherwise? I did mention that I am currently playing the game and enjoying it. And so far strangely enough Rector is the only really weirdly animated chaacter I have noticed. The others I have seem so far are alright I guess.

 

[Abelian]

Maybe he moves awkwardly because he's a super-human Neanderthal.

 

[J_C]

Maybe he moves awkwardly because he's a super-human Neanderthal.

Or maybe because he is gay.

 

[Magic User]

I finally finished it. My impressions:

- A pretty entertaining Jensen yarn, even though it falls short of her best. It didn't deserve the bashing it got.
- The gay undertones are disturbing. In GK2 at least it was kept down a bit. Jensen should realize her target audience is straight.
- The 2d cutscenes of Gray Matter were better than what they did here. Too bad people complained about that and they changed it to 3d.
- Cliffhanger is annoying. Now we have two jensen setups(Gray Matter and this) that will never see a followup.

 

[Aeschylus]

- The gay undertones are disturbing. In GK2 at least it was kept down a bit. Jensen should realize her target audience is straight.

I think in this case her target is herself and other women who enjoy that kind of stuff the same way you might enjoy lesbian porn.

 

[Darth Roxor]

- Cliffhanger is annoying. Now we have two jensen setups(Gray Matter and this) that will never see a followup.

Eh? Gray Matter doesn't need any follow ups, it was closed with no loose ends.

 

[Redlands]

- The gay undertones are disturbing. In GK2 at least it was kept down a bit. Jensen should realize her target audience is straight.

I think in this case her target is herself and other women who enjoy that kind of stuff the same way you might enjoy lesbian porn.

Judging from the moderators of the Adventure Game moderators here, I'd say Jensen knows her target audience very well.

 

[Magic User]

Eh? Gray Matter doesn't need any follow ups, it was closed with no loose ends.

It was setup for a sequel quite clearly...

 

[Bubbles]

99% of this game is way too easy, sometimes insultingly so. A big chunk of the gameplay consists of backtracking and that dumb maze shit. The most entertaining part was how the game kept pounding on the budding gay romance between the protagonists and slathered dick metaphors over everything.

If this had been promoted and executed as a full blown gay love-and-fuck story it would probably have sold quite well.

 

[Sceptic]

Dat maze...

 

[Foxtrix]

I finished the game yesterday. I'm probably gonna repeat much of what has been said in this thread. It shows that the game had a limited budget, and I think it would have benefited a lot from more polish, fleshing out various parts, maybe adding some more environments, characters or things to do. Still, I found it to be a good adventure game. I liked the puzzles. Although most were on the easy side and the game probably offers too many clues, at least you had to think about what to do, there are a lot of puzzles, and I think they integrate well with the story and found them logical. I didn't have a problem with the maze, only that it drags on a bit.

It's kind of sad when this game gets so little attention and bad reviews compared to Ep1 of Broken Age. In my opinion, Broken Age fails completely as an adventure game. For me, it was such a shallow and disappointing experience that I couldn't bring myself to finish episode 1 (I completed Shay's part and left the game at cloud colony). There are no puzzles, you basically click yourself through the story, no interaction, nothing to do, gameplay just felt very boring. I suppose I didn't like the story enough to keep playing.

Anyway, I hope Jane Jensen gets the chance to make new games.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Wow, this game is gay. Literally. And it's actually pretty cool - I can't recall another adventure game where homoerotic themes would be implicit yet so strong.

The writing is competent to good, though I wouldn't call it great. The puzzles are mostly too easy, and the analytical part - especially not the historical but the one that has you analyze the people's looks - is rather simplistic, often to the point of being outright braindead. Some of the same melodramaticism that I hated in Gray Matter is present here, too, but thankfully in much lesser and more bearable doses. Oh, and character models and facial animation are downright hilarious.

Still, the game has that elusive Jane Jensen Charm (tm). I thought Gray Matter was very weak, but this one is actually stronger than the media reception made it out to be. I'd give it despite it being rather on the casual side.

 

[Bubbles]

new patch:

• Upgraded to Unity 4!
• Various game optimizations, translating to faster scene transitions, smoother animations, and overall more efficient memory usage.
• Fixed bug where UI bars were showing in video cutscenes.
• Fixed various camera switch crash bugs from last version
• New cloud button on save/load screen tabs that toggles save directories between Steam Cloud (online) and Local (offline), allowing saving while offline.
  
  Note: Due to the optimizations, we also recommend Steam players delete Moebius from Library and do a fresh install to ensure they have all new files to run the game.

I doubt they'd be making this kind of change to a 54%-on-metacritic game if they didn't have another game with the same engine in the pipeline.