Gabriel Knight's Jane Jensen Working on New Game

Today The Adventure Company announced that it has formed an agreement with legendary adventure game designer Jane Jensen and the company she cofounded, Odyssey Digital Entertainment, to produce a new game. "I'm truly delighted to be working with Jane--we're all massive fans here,' said Adventure Company CEO Richard Wah Kan. "She brings an amazing level of intensity to adventure games." Jensen is best known for her suspenseful Gabriel Knight series of games, which have earned widespread acclaim for their engaging storylines and inventive puzzles. It's been some years since Jensen worked on games, though she has evidently been busy working as a novelist, and recently released a novel called Dante's Equation. Fans of adventure games will no doubt be pleased to hear she is back in the business, however.

Jensen is reportedly still in the design stages for her game for The Adventure Company, which is tentatively being called "Project Jane-J." It will be a third-person-perspective adventure game, a mystery in the vein of Gabriel Knight, again involving the paranormal. The gameplay will require players to investigate and make discoveries on their own, but also be prepared to solve puzzles using logic. The Adventure Company also says the game will feature "some arcade-style sequences." The main character will be a young female student exploring the mysteries of telepathy and other supernatural phenomena. The Adventure Company likens this character's having to use forensic science to solve mysteries to an episode of the hit show CSI, but notes that "the game and storyline will be based on real neurobiology and psi research."

Jensen's next game is slated for release in the fourth quarter of 2004, so it's a ways off. The designer will be in attendance at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this week, and we'll try to catch up with her to bring you more details on what she's working on.