Beneath a Steel Sky

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Beneath a Steel Sky
Image:Beneath a Steel Sky Coverart.png
Developer(s) Revolution Software
Publisher(s) Virgin Interactive
Designer(s) Charles Cecil
Daniel Marchant
Dave Cummins
Dave Gibbons
Tony Warriner
Engine Virtual Theatre
Platform(s) DOS, Amiga, Amiga CD32
Release date March, 1994
Genre(s) Adventure
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) ESRB: T (Teen)
USK: 12+
ELSPA: 15+
Media 3½-inch Floppy, CD-ROM
System requirements PC: 386, DOS 3.3+, 2 RAM
Talkie: CD-ROM & Sound card
Input methods Mouse

Beneath a Steel Sky is a British 1994 science fiction point-and-click adventure game in the cyberpunk genre. It featured comedy elements and was developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released for DOS and Amiga. A CD-ROM version was released for DOS and Amiga CD32 platforms which includes full speech not found in the original.

The game is considered to be among the true classics in the early era of graphic adventure games for the early 1990s. This, in part, is related to the mature science fiction theme that was chosen for this game as compared to other games of the same era where fantasy themes had been dominant. Some critics have attributed this difference to the different visions of the adventure game genre between American and European developers.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Screenshot of Robert Foster being taught to hunt kangaroos.
Screenshot of Robert Foster being taught to hunt kangaroos.

The backstory is introduced through a comic book, drawn by comic artist Dave Gibbons, which tells the story of a young boy called Robert who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in "The Gap". Too young to fend for himself, Robert is adopted by a local tribe, who teach him the skills he needs to survive in this harsh new environment; they name him Robert Foster, partly due to him being fostered by them and also because of the discovery of a label on which the word Foster is written. Foster even learns engineering and technology and builds a talking, sentient robot called Joey.

After Foster reaches adulthood, he is kidnapped and his tribe is annihilated by troopers sent from Union City by its all-powerful computer LINC. Foster manages to escape from his captors as the helicopter transporting him back to Union City crashes just after entering the compound, leaving him and his robot friend, Joey, to find out why they were brought there and where to go next.

Joey's personality is stored on a small circuit board, which can easily be inserted and removed from many types of robot bodies. This allows Joey to change bodies as the situation requires, provided his circuit board is not damaged. Joey, however, is not always happy about Foster's choice of body for him.

Soon the two characters find out about a plot involving Androids, walk through the dirty streets of Union City, and in the end, finish the corrupted LINC once and for all.

[edit] Development

The game's story was scripted by Dave Cummins with graphics and artwork done by Dave Gibbons, Paul Humphreys, Steve Ince, Stephen Oades, Les Pace and Adam Tween. Design was done by Charles Cecil, Dave Cummins, Dave Gibbons and Dan Marchant, while the Virtual Theatre (VT) design was done by Tony Warriner. Programming was carried out by James Long, David Sykes and Tony Warriner.[1]

Despite its status as one of the classics of adventure gaming, Beneath a Steel Sky suffered a troublesome production. The small team at Revolution found the size of the game a daunting task, resulting in long, stressful hours of programming, leading to tension within the company.

Because of the scope of the game -- being four times the size of its predecessor, Lure of the Temptress -- the programmers couldn't implement their Virtual Theatre system of independently roaming NPCs as effectively. Characters instead follow very simplified routines, as opposed to Lure where their freedom of movement was much greater. The design of the game was also simplified and greatly altered from its original design, according to Warriner.

The working title for the game was Underworld[1] and was the second to use Revolution Software's Virtual Theatre engine, the first being Lure of the Temptress.[2] The game's backgrounds and introduction sequence were designed by Dave Gibbons.[1] The introduction sequence was also included as a separate promotional comic book in some releases of the game.[2]

[edit] Reception

The game's initial release in the UK was met with critical acclaim, reaching the number one place in the GALLUP charts and receiving 95% from CU Amiga, 94% from Amiga Format and 93% from The One. The release in the USA was met with almost equal success with 4/5 from Computer Gaming World and 91% ('Editors choice Award') and ('Best Dialogue') from PC Gamer in 1995. In May 1995 Beneath a Steel Sky was awarded the prestigious Golden Joystick Award for 'The Best Adventure'.

Since its initial release the game has received glowing reviews from various websites. Adventure Classic Gaming gave the game a 4/5 rating and stated that the game was ahead of its time and "despite its gloomy and serious storyline, Beneath a Steel Sky is a game filled with humor and warm characters."[2] The review at Quandary gave the game a 3.5 out of 5 overall rating, stating that "there are many newer games with infinitely superior graphics and sound that are inferior experiences to this."[3]

[edit] Legal status

In August 2003, the game was released as freeware — software available free of charge — and support for it was added to ScummVM, allowing it to be played on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows CE and other compatible operating systems and platforms.[4] The data files for both the disk and CD version are available from the ScummVM website. The files on the ScummVM website do not include the original program executables since they are not needed by ScummVM.[5]

[edit] Sequel

"Beneath a Steel Sky 2 is a project Revolution has been considering for a while, and has started to move forward on, but we are unable to comment beyond this,” company boss Charles Cecil said in 2004. On March 4, 2004, Revolution purchased the domain name steel-sky2.com, although this has now seemingly been sold.

However, in September 2005 Tony Warriner stated in Revolution’s forum that the game wasn’t cancelled, and that he would not lose hope that there would be a Steel Sky 2 at some point in the future. More recently, Charles Cecil spoke in an interview dated August 10, 2006 on Eurogamer of his admiration for the work done by Scumm VM and the resulting interest in a sequel. He also stated that if he were to make the game he "would dearly love to work with Dave Gibbons again.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c BASS at Moby Games. Moby Games. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.
  2. ^ a b c review at adventure classic gaming. Adventure Classic Gaming. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.
  3. ^ Ramsey, Steve (2002). review at Quandary. Quandary. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.
  4. ^ Revolution Software Ltd. Revolution website. Revolution Software Ltd. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.
  5. ^ a b Cecil, Charles (2006). Live by the Sword. Eurogamer. Retrieved on 2008-04-29.

[edit] External links

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