Joey's personality is stored on a small circuit board, which can easily be inserted and removed from many types of robot bodies. This was confirmed in a 2005 interview with the Australian gaming magazine, PC PowerPlay.įoster manages to escape from his captors as the helicopter transporting him back to Union City crashes just after entering the dome, leaving him and his robot friend, Joey, to find out why they were brought there and where to go next, while security continues to search for him. Interestingly, Union City mentions prominent suburbs and train stations found within Australia's largest city, Sydney, leading some to speculate that Union City was once Sydney. Foster even learns engineering and technology and builds a talking, sentient robot called Joey.Īfter Foster has reached adulthood, he is kidnapped and his tribe annihilated by storm-troopers sent from Union City by its all-powerful computer LINC. Too young to fend for himself, Robert is adopted by a local group of Indigenous Australians, who teach him the skills he needs to survive in this harsh new environment they name him Robert Foster, partly due to him being fostered by them and also because of the discovery of an empty can of Foster's Lager, an Australian beer, found near him at the crash site. The game's backstory is introduced via a comic book, drawn by well-known comic artist Dave Gibbons, that tells the story of a young boy called Robert who is the sole survivor of a plane crash in "the Gap" (the name applied to the Australian Outback at the time of the game). The game takes place at an unknown point in a dystopian future in Australia, where the Earth has been significantly damaged by pollution or nuclear fallout. The game was made available as freeware in 2003 via ScummVM and runs under compatible systems, including Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It was initially released for DOS and Amiga. It featured comedy elements and was developed by Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment. Many of the robots and AI’s had me cracking up, and Foster’s performer was just the right blend of serious and sarcastic.Beneath a Steel Sky is a British 1994 science fiction point and click adventure game in the cyberpunk genre. All of the voice actors deliver solid performances, with just the right amount of camp and absurdity when needed. The soundtrack fits the game well, with tunes that reinforce the cyberpunk theme, as well as add the appropriate tone for what is playing out in front of you. The sound design is another strong point. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen too often and you’re mostly able to feel like you’re inside a visual novel. During a few conversations it’s particularly noticeable that Foster looks like a moving comic book character, while the other person almost appears to have been made of clay. There are some occasions where the cel-shading filter seems to have been forgotten, though. The whole game has a cel-shaded look that makes it feel like a comic book come to life. Not only is the story strong, but so is the art design. So this is what it looks like inside a mainframe. It worked, but that was only a few minutes into the game and it wasn’t the only time I had problems. I couldn’t get to my next objective without his info, so I had to reload my game. I pushed him once with no problem, then he somehow shifted to standing right in the middle of it and I was unable to push him anymore. In the very beginning, there’s a part where I needed to push a young boy on an old roundabout a few times to encourage him to give me some information. No, the biggest hindrance to this otherwise amazing game is just how buggy it is. Not just with the camera either, although that certainly creates its fair share of headaches. It is however, a 3D fully explorable adventure game, so that leads to certain complications. Being a point-and-click style game, there isn’t too much in the way of complex gameplay. While the writing and world building are great, Beyond a Steel Sky suffers from a lot of technical issues. Unfortunately, it’s not all a blissful experience. I hacked into more of these than I’d care to admit.
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