Beneath a Steel Sky

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Description

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.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

• "Beyond The Abyss" -- Working title
• "Beneath a Steel Sky: Remastered" -- iPhone title
• "BASS" -- Common abbreviation

Part of the Following Groups

• Compilations: Beneath a Steel Sky
• Game Engine: Virtual Theatre
• Game Feature: Simulated Internet
• Games made into comics
• Physical Bonus Content: Comic
• Setting: Australian / Oceanian
• Theme: Hacking / Pseudohacking

User Reviews

A point-and-click you shouldn't miss if you're a PC adventurer	DOS	OrcishGrunt (118)
An adventure most british. Dark yet witty and interesting.	DOS	Zovni (10648)
Sky of Steel	DOS	Christina Nordlander (26)
A lucasarts type adventure set in a futuristic world	DOS	devils102 (20)
Be vigilant	DOS	Katakis | カタキス (39491)
Guybrush Threepwood would LOVE this game!	DOS	Indra was here (20930)
Much ado about nothing	DOS	jorgeabe (14)
EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!	DOS	Icarus Lytton (23)
A neat and fun little adventure.	Windows	Fuzzyfireball (44)
Over-rated, but good at representing the Big Brother-Orwellian state theme.	DOS	Depth Lord (1003)

Critic Reviews

CU Amiga	Amiga	Jan, 1994	95 out of 100	95
Amiga Format	Amiga	Mar, 1994	94 out of 100	94
Joystick (French)	DOS	Mar, 1994	92 out of 100	92
Amiga Joker	Amiga	Mar, 1994	87 out of 100	87
Play Time	DOS	Sep, 1994	86 out of 100	86
Play Time	DOS	Mar, 1994	84 out of 100	84
Joystick (French)	DOS	Oct, 1994	80 out of 100	80
Adventure Corner	DOS	Mar 26, 2004	80 out of 100	80
ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)	Amiga	Jun, 1994	9 out of 12	75
Aventura y Cía	DOS	Feb 20, 2005	3.5 out of 5	70

Forums

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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 proviso 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
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  Related Web Sites

  • Beneath a Steel Sky (official website)
  • Beneath a Steel Sky - FAQs and Guides (Various files including walkthroughs and strategies posted on GameFaqs.com)
  • 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!)
  • 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)
  • Wikipedia: Beneath a Steel Sky (article on the open encyclopedia site)
  Contributed to by Picard (40707), Sciere (515386), Baxter (41), Kabushi (210243) and Syed GJ (1579)