Beneath a Steel Sky

aka: BASS, Beneath a Steel Sky: Remastered, Beyond The Abyss
Moby ID: 386
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

In futuristic Australia, there are giant cities owned solely by corporations, separated by a giant wasteland known as The Gap. When Robert Foster's Gap-dwelling tribe is killed by soldiers from Union City who capture him, everything changes for him. After a narrow escape from the helicopter bringing him there as it inexplicably crashes, Robert and his droid Joey must search the decaying city, attempting to befriend both the snobby rich and the frustrated poor as the two attempt to get out of the city, but in the middle of everything they uncover the dark truth about LINC, the bizarre computer which makes the city tick.

The game uses the Virtual Theatre engine from Lure of the Temptress, which allows its characters to move freely independent of the player's input, making the game world more dynamic than it is usually the case in comparable games. Otherwise, the engine provides traditional point-and-click adventure gameplay.

The iPhone version introduces a touch-based interface, new animated movies by Dave Gibbons, a context-sensitive hint system and a remastered audio track.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

44 People (41 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Game Design
Programming
Script
V T System Concept
V T System Design
V T System 2.0 Implementation
Music
Music Conversion & Sound Effects
Comic
Background Screens
Background Paintings
Computer Graphics and Animation
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 85% (based on 54 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 274 ratings with 17 reviews)

Much ado about nothing

The Good
Most of this review you'll find it in the "the bad" section. It's difficult to discover something good and prominent in an adventure that is very poor in every aspect. Maybe the best thing is its comic-book-style introduction, well narrated and illustrated, but short. Sadly, there isn't any vestige of that comic style in the rest of the game. I suppose a few pages of comic book won't convince to someone about this game, …or yes?

The Bad
I'm not a guy who is on pursuit of every "over-hyped" game, in order to then join to the adoration with rest of people. Neither I'm of those that hate this games before play them. So, I approached to "Beneath a Steel Sky" with a moderate expectation, but with intention of enjoy it, such as with every adventure that I play. However, other than a promising preface (its comic-book), it took me no long time realize this game is of those that gained good reputation because of to have a nice title and a little of good luck in the law of "chain reaction" acceptance of gamers, even though in its essence is rather ordinary and lacking of personality.

As I said, the start is attractive, but I lost that interest immediately because of the important thing about the game is to solve frustrating and not very clever puzzles, which don't fit very well with the main story. Puzzles are of type (but not quality) of Lucas Arts's games. Perhaps I might have tolerated that if the story's unfolding had been attractive, but not: the unfolding is very, very superficial and simple, what confirms far more that the important thing is to solve un-intuitive puzzles.

The atmosphere is very poor: the graphics don't convey any feel of to be in a huge futuristic city, since they are so static and unoccupied that sometimes seem cardboard backgrounds. The music is practically one song, plain and monotonous. The (few) characters aren't interesting or important, in part due to hollow dialogues that we have with them: they inform very little about situation, background story, other characters, etc. They're there just because they're an ingredient of some annoying puzzle.

In its "comic"' introduction, the game shows a dramatic tone. However, that is an illusion. The main character jokes with everything, and in general, he doesn't take anything seriously, although there is blood and deaths during the plot. This attempt of comedy, plus its puzzles, did me feel as if I were playing a Monkey Island, but with deaths, little humor and boring puzzles. It is a confusing blend.

The Bottom Line
I don't understand why so many people consider it a classic adventure, raise it at the level of TRUE classics, like lots of Lucas Arts and Sierra's adventures. But, is it that they don't see (or feel) the huge difference? BASS is not a complete waste, but like sci-fi story, it's void and simple, and like a game, it's boring and frustrating. That's not to be a good game. And much less a classic.

DOS · by jorgeabe (13) · 2007

Over-rated, but good at representing the Big Brother-Orwellian state theme.

The Good
Where do I start?

Interesting plot and nice twist plots, not so great as the Gabriel Knight series plots but nice.

What concerns gameplay... Having your robot side-kick to use it in different ways expands the game's puzzle possibilities.

The graphics are good too, the sprites are cool I liked the backgrounds very much, they depicted very well the division of the metropolis into parts.

The Bad
Not much flaws, but the following can be disappointing for adventure game hardcore players: It is ridiculously easy! I finished this game in two days.

Some of the music was repetitive, except for the main theme, which was good.

I also experienced some bugs with the ScummVM interpreter, but the game ran nice when I played it on DOS. Not much

The Bottom Line
If you liked books like 1984 or Animal Farm by Orwell you will like the plot of Beneath the Steel Sky, but If you don't care about that you will find in that game a mediocre adventure game.

DOS · by Depth Lord (934) · 2005

A neat and fun little adventure.

The Good
The puzzles are solid, mostly inventory based. A couple I found particularly tricky.

The characters are a joy to talk to and meet, each with their own great and matching personalities. Your side kick Joey is a funny, sarcastic little robot who had me chuckling a couple of times.

The story is interesting enough that I wanted to keep playing just to see what happens next. Some small twists here and there really keep it feeling fresh and exciting. Tho the ending felt very bitter sweet, it was still very much worth it.

The art is fantastic and does a great job depicting a futuristic, rusty metallic, dirty and grim futuristic city. All the characters and items are also looking great, with nice smooth animations for everything.

The music is good, with lots of different tunes for different sections of the game. All very fitting.

The voice acting was a nice addition, tho near the end of the game it appears to glitch and cause some text to either go too fast or skip entirely.

The Bad
Besides the audio glitches near the end, and the ending not being the greatest, I really have no other major cons to point out. It was a very enjoyable experience.

The Bottom Line
If you enjoy adventures/point-n-clicks, this is one of those classic ones you should definitely check out! Great story, great characters, great art, solid puzzles and good music all round out to an awesome game!

Windows · by corpse+flower (30) · 2012

[ View all 17 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Beneath a Steel Sky appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Amiga version

Programmers of the Amiga version left the following information in the main "exe" file. The information describes big problems the programmers had with deficient Amiga hardware when developing the game:

At the beginning the programmers were happy and did rejoice at their task, for the Amiga before them did shineth and was full of promise. But then they did look closer and did see'th the awful truth; it's floppies were tiny and sloweth (rareth was its hard drive). And so small was it's memory that did at first appear large; queereth also was its configuration(s). Then they did findeth another Amiga, and this was slightly different from the first. Then a third, and this was different again. All different, but not really better, for all were pseudo backward compatible. But, eventually, it did come to pass that Steel Sky was implemented on a 1meg os-legal CBM Amiga. And the programmers looked and saw that it was indeed a miracle. But they were not joyous and instead did weep for nobody knew just what had been done.

CD-ROM release

Beneath a Steel Sky was also released on CDROM featuring full speech.

Comic

A comic book drawn by Dave Gibbons was included in the box in the original release version of the game and served as an introduction to the game. As of 2000, the comic book can be read online at Revolution's website.

Development and release

Beneath a Steel Sky was originally started for Mirrorsoft, back in 1991. When the game was entering its final stages, Robert Maxwell, Mirrorsoft's owner died in a yachting accident, and the powerhouse publisher went bottom-up in December of that year. The result was that the game was put on the back burner for a while.

In March 1992, Revolution approached Virgin and asked the publishers if they wanted to take Underworld, as it was called then, as well as Lure of the Temptress. This was agreed on the provision that Revolution used the Virtual Theatre 2 system - an update of the original Virtual Theatre engine used in Lure of the Temptress. Underworld became Beneath a Steel Sky after the launch of Ultima Underworld.

It took about £40,000 to make the game, a huge amount for the company at that time, but the game sold extremely well at retail, managing between 3-400,000 copies, almost all of which were from Europe.

Freeware release

As for Aug 02, 2003, Beneath a Steel Sky became officially freeware. The creators of ScummVM, a gaming interface written to make old adventure games playable on modern operating systems (only when you own the original software) asked developer Revolution if they were allowed to take a look at the source code to be able to fully support the game in their interface. They got more than they expected when Revolution made the full game (CD version with music and speech) available to everyone.

GOG.com release

The GOG.com release uses the cross-platform virtual machine ScummVM to make the game available for Windows users.

Swears and nudity

The little robot Joey during the game say Bull S**t which was a very big deal at the time. It also has pictures of women's breasts in the plastic surgery room.

Awards

  • Amiga Joker
    • Issue 02/1995 – #2 Best Adventure in 1994 (Readers' Vote)
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 06/2005 - #1 Likeable Secondary Character (for Joey)

Information also contributed by B.L. Stryker, game nostalgia, Matthew Bailey, Roger Wilco, Sciere, Swordmaster and Xoleras

Analytics

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Related Sites +

  • Beneath a Steel Sky - FAQs and Guides
    Various files including walkthroughs and strategies posted on GameFaqs.com
  • Freeloader.com
    You can now download Beneath a Steel Sky for free.
  • Game Nostalgia
    Provides extensive background info for Beneath a Steel Sky, pictures of the cast and examples of voice-overs, full credits with shots and info about the design team, a demo of the game, specific details about the game, various goodies, all musical themes, shots of every location in the game, saved games, a list of reviews, including a "nostalgic "review and tech specs.
  • Hints for Beneath a Steel Sky
    Hints by Jason Strautman will nudge you along so you can solve the game yourself. Final solutions are included.
  • ScummVM Homepage
    An open-source project allowing players to play Beneath a Steel Sky on a wide variety of platforms, such as Mac OS X, modern versions of Windows, and the Sega Dreamcast. The site also provides a free, public-domain download of the game for use with ScummVM.
  • Steel Sky Walkthrough
    Full solution posted on Revolution's web site
  • dcevolution.net
    Since this game has been released as freeware, and ScummVM has been ported to the Dreamcast. You can download a Dreamcast version at www.dcevo.com for free!

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 386
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Contribute

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Baxter.

Windows added by Picard. Macintosh, iPhone added by Sciere. Amiga CD32 added by Kabushi. Linux added by Iggi. Amiga added by Syed GJ.

Additional contributors: Brian Hirt, Macintrash, Shane k, Jony Shahar, Jeanne, Zack Green, Sciere, Darksaviour69, martin jurgens, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, theclue.

Game added November 5, 1999. Last modified January 28, 2024.