BRAVE NEW PERSPECTIVE
For simply still being around, Revolution Software deserves a lifetime achievement award. The British studio was founded and rose to prominence in the 1990s with classics like Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars and Beneath a Steel Sky. Point-and-click adventures were their specialty—a genre that flourished briefly in the early ’90s before fading into obscurity. I loved these games back then because they were virtually alone in putting storytelling first. But as other genres began to absorb adventure game elements—chiefly narrative focus and dialogue—the classic point-and-click formula quickly became redundant. New entries have continued to appear over the years, but rarely with much fanfare. Today, the genre is firmly niche.
Through all these shifts, Revolution has stubbornly stuck to its guns, like an old cowboy refusing to accept that the Wild West is long gone. They still make adventure games with the same narrative gusto and puzzle-driven design they had in their 1992 debut Lure of the Temptress. For that reason alone, I try to buy their games at launch. It’s not that I still love their games unconditionally—it’s the studio and its uncompromising philosophy that I love. I want Revolution to keep doing what they’re doing, in defiance of trends, studio closures, and mass layoffs, and to soldier on forever. They feel like the last surviving remnant of the adventure gamer I once was.
Historically, Revolution has been at its best when sticking to tradition: mouse controls, fixed perspectives, and streamlined point-and-click interfaces. That’s why it surprised me to like Beyond a Steel Sky almost as much as their older classics. It looks radically different. The point-and-click interface is gone, replaced by an over-the-shoulder third-person camera with direct character control—an approach more typical of action adventures. Yet, somehow, the soul of the gameplay remains intact.
Messing with perspective and controls has spelled disaster for adventure games in the past, including Revolution’s own weakest efforts (Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon and The Angel of Death). This time, though, they’ve found a clever workaround. Inventory puzzles are fewer, more logical, and less opaque. Instead, the designers lean heavily into a new type of puzzle built around basic hacking and programming logic.
Many problems are solved by pulling out a hacking device and rewiring the functions of machines and robots. Want a free soda? Hack the vending machine and rearrange its logic so it dispenses a can when you’re out of credits. It’s refreshing to see a genre infamous for “moon logic” embrace actual logic—of the programming variety. These puzzles are generally straightforward, perhaps even too easy, but they represent a welcome move away from pixel hunting and blind trial-and-error.
The setting does much of the heavy lifting. Beyond a Steel Sky is a belated sequel to the 1994 cult classic Beneath a Steel Sky. In that game, you played Robert Foster, a man of mysterious origin seeking to liberate Union City, a dystopian metropolis under totalitarian control. Its Orwellian inspiration was clear, though undermined somewhat by comedic dialogue and jaunty music that clashed with the oppressive themes.
The sequel instead draws from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a faux-utopian vision far better suited to Revolution’s lighter tone. Ten years have passed. Foster returns to Union City from the desert wasteland known as the Gap, searching for a kidnapped boy. The city has changed. At the end of the first game, Foster left his robot companion Joey in charge. Now, he finds the citizens worshipping Joey like a god.
On the surface, life seems better. People are happy. The city is clean, colorful, and orderly—but the cheer feels manufactured. Joey has vanished, rumored to have wandered into the wasteland, and a council of five ministers now governs in his absence. As Foster investigates the kidnapping, he uncovers a new, subtler form of oppression operating beneath the city’s smiling facade.
The story is strong—at least on par with the original—and culminates in a powerful final stretch I won’t soon forget. A cast of charismatic characters passes through the narrative, each with quirks you can exploit in puzzle-solving. One standout involves a pretentious poet who invites a robot to perform at a public poetry reading. By tinkering with the droid’s settings, you can engineer a wonderfully absurd distraction. Dave Gibbons’ cel-shaded art design wraps the entire experience in a comic-book aesthetic that perfectly suits the tone and characters.
The free camera allows you to take in Union City’s skyscrapers and factory chimneys, and for once in a Revolution game, the world feels genuinely alive. NPCs roam streets and plazas, gossiping and interacting. Vultures linger nearby, hoping for discarded snacks. The skies are blue, plants have returned, and color fills the city—but everything still feels artificial, as hollow as the citizens’ smiles.
Unfortunately, the game also shows its age in less flattering ways, particularly in its controls. Robert moves with the speed and grace of an arthritic ox. Walking is so slow it’s practically useless, and running feels mandatory. This is one of the hazards of abandoning point-and-click movement: direct control adds friction where there should be none. Adventure games are meant to be thought through, not wrestled with. Thankfully, the areas are compact enough that this remains a minor irritation.
Patience has always been a prerequisite for adventure games, and nowhere is that more evident than in the dialogue. Characters have an abundance of lines, and crucial hints are repeated relentlessly. Every conversation seems eager to deliver lore dumps or jokes at every opportunity, resulting in dialogue that circles endlessly around the same topics. Subjects only fade once they’re fully exhausted—and exhausting them takes time.
That said, the writing is often genuinely funny. Joey’s eventual return (hardly a spoiler given the box art) restores the delightful banter between him and Foster, as if no time has passed. Few games make dialogue itself a gameplay mechanic, but Beyond a Steel Sky does exactly that in a standout interrogation scene where someone off-screen feeds you answers through pantomime. It’s clever, funny, and emblematic of what Revolution still does best.
I learned to live with the flaws, carried along by the story’s strong forward momentum. The game always provides a clear objective, steadily guiding you toward its intriguing conclusion without pointless detours. Puzzle design is consistently strong. Conversations spark ideas, inventory puzzles are intuitive, and limiting the “use” command to relevant objects nearly eliminates trial-and-error.
Overall, Beyond a Steel Sky is a surprisingly strong return to Union City. It welcomes newcomers while meaningfully expanding on the original’s themes and events. It belongs to an ancient, almost forgotten genre, but its hacking-based puzzles suggest a possible way forward. The genre’s future may be limited, but this is about as good as one could reasonably hope for.
More than anything, Revolution Software deserves recognition. I’m genuinely happy they still exist. They’re the only studio from my adolescence still intact, still making the same kind of games, led by the same creative force in Charles Cecil. They’ve stumbled in the past, flirted with compromise—but they’ve never sold out. They’re driven by a desire to tell stories. Their games may no longer shake my world, but they still gently rock my past.
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