Beyond a Steel Sky

Building a LINC to the past.

The 1994 adventure game

Beneath A Steel Sky was considered quite good (like 91 percent good), and to call it fondly remembered would be an understatement. And now, in 2020 of all years, it gets a sequel.

The last time protagonist Robert Foster was in Union City it was under the benevolent authority of his pal Joey. Ten years later, he’s dragged back to find it’s now under the control of The Council, and that everyone is really happy. They’ve got to be, because their lives hang on their Qdos scores. It’s nudge theory run rampant, as things like turning up for work and taking part in daily votes alter your score, which affects where you can go and how low in the towering arcologies you can live.

Of course, this world of hi-tech Eloi and Morlocks wouldn’t be the same without a dark secret. Layers of high crimes and misdemeanours peel back to expose the twisted logic at their core like something from a monstrous episode of Black Mirror. While Beneath A Steel Sky showed that a sick society could be saved by a good man (or robot),

Beyond sees a utopia exposed and torn down, the nobility of its characters setting them against one another.

Considering the enormous shadow it chooses to live in. It burns brightly in spite of this – the lightly cel-shaded art has never looked better, and the update from point-and-click to WASD is a positive choice. The narrative wraps itself around that of the first game, although it doesn’t matter if you haven’t played it (but you should).

There are failures of logic, though, odd for a game whose denouement is tied up in paradox and reasoning. Puzzles can plunge into a maddening game of throwing every switch and trying every object with everything in your inventory. Moments of head-scratching are nothing new in adventure games and they do nothing to detract from the superb world Revolution has constructed. Is it a patch on the original? No: it’s an upgrade.

Filled with what made the original game great, this second trip to Union City has been worth the 26-year hiatus.