Beneath a Steel Sky

About the game

Beneath a Steel Sky drops Robert Foster — raised in the Australian outback wasteland after a helicopter crash — back into Union City, the brutalist arcology that had him abducted. The city runs upside down: the rich live on the ground among parks and daylight while workers toil in the towers above, all of it administered by LINC, an AI whose idea of civic welfare gets steadily more anatomical as the plot descends toward the truth about Foster's past.

Foster's constant companion is Joey, a robot personality on a circuit board who can be installed into new shells — welders, medical units, vacuum cleaners — changing both his abilities and the flavour of his complaints. Their double act carries the game: Dave Gibbons (of Watchmen fame) drew the comic-book intro and the city's grim-deco look, while the writing lands an unusual register of bleak setting, warm humour and genuine menace.

A landmark of British adventure design from Revolution Software, it was later released as freeware — a gesture that introduced Union City to a whole second generation and cemented its cult-classic status.

Technical notes

Revolution's Virtual Theatre engine let NPCs pursue their own schedules around the city. Dave Gibbons art directs the look. The archive documents DOS and Amiga releases; the game was later made freely available by its creators.