| Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony | |
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| Developer(s) | Origin Systems |
| Publisher(s) | Brøderbund |
| Designer(s) | Greg Malone |
| Platform(s) | x86 (MS-DOS), Apple II series, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, Macintosh SE |
| Release date(s) | 1985 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing video game with action elements. |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Media/distribution | 5.25" Floppy Disk, 3.5" Floppy Disk . |
Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony is a video game produced by Origin Systems and designed by Greg Malone. It was originally released in 1985 for the Apple II series of personal computers. Versions were also released for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Macintosh SE, and DOS.
The world of the game is inspired by Eastern philosophy, including such elements as martial arts combat, karma, meditation, fasting and frequent use of the yin-yang symbol.
The game is primarily a top-down view tile-based role-playing video game, but it has action-based combat sequences which use a side view, roughly similar to games such as Karateka.
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The player's objective, as disciple of the Headmaster, is to recover the Orb of Celestial Harmony from disciple-turned-badguy Kaimen. To do that, the player must train its body and soul in the best tradition of Chinese warriors: to "walk the path of Moebius the Windwalker." The action takes place on the four Elemental planes of Earth, Water, Air and Fire, which the player must traverse in order to recover the Orb. Although gameplay is similar to standard RPGs, there are some differences: in addition to familiar character statistics such as dexterity, the players also has karma, a crucial attribute that goes up or down constantly depending on his deeds. Frighten a citizen with a sword, and the karma will drop; defeat monsters in battle, and it will rise. Combat is also played in a 2D side-scrolling view similar to fighting games, having a wide range of attacks to use, even including shurikens and fireballs if the character is experienced enough.
Origin Systems produced a sequel to the game, entitled Windwalker, which was available for a number of home computer systems.
The game was reviewed in 1989 in Dragon #141 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 4½ out of 5 stars.[1]