Beneath a Steel Sky was Resolution Software’s second point-and-click adventure back in 1994. Set in a dystopian Australia dominated by a computer mainframe, it was a stark contrast to the other more ‘light-hearted’ titles in the genre during the decade.
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Beneath a Steel Sky was a collaboration between game director Charles Cecil and comic book artist Dave Gibbons almost twenty years ago. Costing £40,000 to make, it was originally called Underworld but was renamed due to the release of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss. The title was considered massive in scope back in 1994 as it featured over a hundred locations and full voice acting, and it received very positive reviews from both critics and gamers.
I fell in love with adventures when I was very young after playing The Secret of Monkey Island for the first time on my new Amiga. Afterwards, whenever my dad saw magazines that included floppy disc demos of new titles he used to get them for me, and I remember that this was how I originally came across Beneath a Steel Sky. I didn’t get very far with it however: the grim atmosphere wasn’t much to my liking after the light-heartedness of Guybrush’s escapades and I just didn’t get the humour. But now that I’ve actually completed the game I can see that that was probably a good thing – an eight year old child shouldn’t be able to understand that much sexual innuendo!
It’s probably for the best that I didn’t understand this humour when I was young!
The title is in an alternate version of Australia which has been damaged by years of pollution. The industrialised Union City is dominated by LINC, a computer mainframe that controls every aspect of the population’s lives. As a child, Robert Foster was stranded outside of the metropolis in the bleak wasteland known as the Gap (not The Gap as there isn’t a shred of denim in sight) and adopted by a group of outcasts. But after many years, armed security officers arrive to take him back to Union City. Armed with only a robot circuit board, Foster must escape and fight for his survival while discovering the sinister truth behind his abduction.
With a storyline like that it’s permissible to assume that there’d be an atmosphere of paranoia and fear running throughout the game. Indeed, the presence of either security or LINC terminals in almost every location certainly suggests this. But Foster doesn’t seem too bothered about hiding his identity while talking to people throughout the city and quite readily admits that he’s from the Gap after they tell him about the saboteur on the loose. And as for Anita, the tech who divulges that she can give you a security jammer very soon after meeting – well, I’m not surprised she ended up the way she did if she treats all strangers that way.
Even Foster thinks that him revealing his origins is stupid.
Beneath a Steel Sky plays as a straightforward point-and-click adventure, with a left-click allowing players to examine items and a right-click enabling interaction. The inventory is accessible via a drop-down panel at the top of the screen and, unlike some other classic adventures from the same time, never seems to become overloaded with useless objects. There’s no SCUMM-style verb board to obscure the bottom of the monitor and this results in a very tidy and simple interface.
Progression requires the use of inventory, interaction with other characters and a little assistance every now and again from your robotic sidekick, Joey. His personality exists on a circuit board which can be plugged into several different shells during the course of the game. These may give him various new skills – such as the ability to unlock doors, explore areas closed off to Foster and press buttons – but he’s not always happy about the new body you’ve found him, and his humorous sarcastic remarks highlight this running gag throughout the title.
The game’s design is ahead of most others from the same era, in which non-player characters are usually either found static at a single location or repeatedly tracking between a very limited number of places. But in Beneath a Steel Sky, Revolution Software’s Virtual Theatre scripting system enables them to move through the world independently. While this does have the benefit of making Union City seem more alive there are a couple of drawbacks: you sometimes won’t be able to direct Foster to where you want him to go because somebody is in the way and Joey is often not where you need him to be. You’ll feel like giving him a kick up the arse because he doesn’t always follow you, and when he does he moves so slowly!
I felt that some of the game’s puzzles required pretty big leaps of logic and I just couldn’t understand the reasons behind them. For example, it didn’t seem obvious why I should pick up a video tape showing kittens, and why I should then use this to distract a dog long enough to steal its biscuits. I guess it’s possible that Foster survived in the Gap all those years by scavenging so he’s continuing this learned behaviour in Union City, taking all sorts of seemingly-useless items just because they’re not nailed down. But because the actions needed to progress are sometimes so weird, it’s can be difficult to figure out where you’re supposed to go next without a bit of frustrating trial and error.
Foster is clearly engrossed in the Pussies on Parade video.
On top of this, several puzzles only open after you’ve gone through a specific set of conversations with certain characters. This means that you have to travel from one end of the game map to the other, perhaps multiple times, and it can get tedious after a while. You do come to expect this title-lengthening mechanic from a lot of classic adventures but when you have to get a swipecard out of your inventory every time you want to open an elevator door, it’s just too much.
The game’s opening is a cartoon by comic book artist Gibbons of The Watchmen fame, and during my research I found that a lot of critics praised this introduction. While creative and good-looking, for me it just felt at odds with the rest of the title; I like my retro adventures to feature pixelated scenes and jerky animations as a storyline overview. The colour palette and static backgrounds can mean that Beneath a Steel Sky looks a little drab in places, but considering that Foster has found himself in a soulless and heavily-polluted industrial environment it’s not that unbelievable.
Not sure if it’s wise to have an operation performed by this doctor…
Unfortunately, there are a few criticisms about the sound. As mentioned earlier, the game is set in a dystopian Australia that has been damaged by years of pollution; so why is some of the music so damn happy-sounding? Even though there are plenty of humorous moments, the overall mood is meant to be dark and foreboding so the jingly track heard on the second level of Union City seems extremely out of place. Alongside this, Foster has picked up an American accent during his life in the Australian wilderness and other characters speak in a diverse range of regional British dialects; the voice-acting therefore comes across as really disjointed.
A highlight however is the appearance of Mrs Piermont, the wife of the professor who created the LINC system. Listen closely to her voice and you might recognise her as the lusty Lady Piermont from Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. While the majority of the voice-acting might not be up to scratch the script is miles better, and there are plenty of sexual innuendos and sleazy insinuations to keep everyone giggling – from ‘Pipes are the arteries of this mighty erection’ to ‘Better not get too close, I might get sucked off’.
Mrs Piermont makes a welcome appearance – Lady Piermont’s sister, perhaps?
Unfortunately the replayability value here is low, with the game being quite short and puzzle solutions the same each time. But if you enjoyed it then you’ll be happy to hear that a sequel is in the pipeline. In September 2012, Revolution Software announced that they would give the greenlight to Beneath a Steel Sky 2 if their Kickstarter campaign for Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse reached $1 million; and despite this target not being met, the developer was so inspired by backers’ enthusiasm that they started work on the next instalment in the series.
Although I didn’t enjoy this game as much as some of the other classic adventures from the 1990s, I wouldn’t be adverse to playing the sequel. But I’m hoping for a plot with more background detail and less holes, and puzzles with more logical reasoning for their existence. That being said however, Beneath a Steel Sky will keep you occupied for around five hours and, considering that it’s free on GOG, it’s a great way to get in some retro gaming.
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