Beneath a Steel Sky

From thecrankyhermit

Beneath a Steel Sky
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Companies Revolution Software, Virgin Interactive
First release date Mar 1994
Original platform(s) DOS
Current official platform(s) GOG
Optimization notes ScummVM, General MIDI

Quest adventure

Beneath a Steel Sky
Revolution collaborated with graphic novelist Dave Gibbons, and created a dark, grim dystopia of an adventure game, which stands in a stark but welcome contrast to the light fantasy typical of LucasArts and Sierra games that dominated the period. The plot is very good, well written and rather remniscient of Phillip K. Dick, and centered around the player as the key instigator in its events. The various characters you interact with are colorful and funny/witty in the dry British fashion, especially your robot sidekick Joey. Unusually for an adventure game, they have their own internal agendas and will walk around the city, talk to each other, and do things on their own schedule. Puzzles are reasonable in difficulty, and made more interesting by the frequent need to interact with or manipulate free-willed NPCs, or to work in tandem with Joey (whose circuits can also be transplanted into unoccupied robot bodies lying around, giving him different abilities to solve puzzles with). Death situations, though not in abundance, *do* exist so save often! Gibbons also wrote and illustrated a pack-in comic, detailing the prologue chapter.

The game was released as freeware, and may be downloaded from Scummvm.org or GOG. The original floppy version has a different introduction sequence compared to the now more common CD-ROM version, but ScummVM gives the option to restore it as an alternate intro.

Key people Charles Cecil, Tony Warriner