Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)

This is a fine example of classic adventure gaming; a mixture of cute environments, quirky characters plus challenging (and often infuriating puzzles). Compared to other, similar adventure titles Beneath a Steel Sky can be a little repetitive with a lot of revisiting areas to see if something's changed, or while trying in vain to find something for which that sandwich is the ideal solution; although many of the puzzles and fairly easy with some light creative thinking or good guesswork, others can be extremely arbitrary; leaving you stuck for ages just because you didn't choose that one dialogue option for that one character at the other end of the game world; so absolutely choose every dialogue option you can as you never know what will trigger something new. Voice acting in this game is functional enough if a bit lacklustre at times, and the music can get annoying very quickly. This adventure does nonetheless have some great little features such as Joey your little robot pal who can be used to solve various puzzles, and the storyline, though not exactly gripping still has some twists towards the end. For a free title this is something well worth trying, and I do recommend sticking with it, and who knows, you may just develop that craving for adventure gaming all over again :)

One of the all time classic point and click adventures. Awesome atmosphere and storyline. If you never experienced "Beneath a Steel Sky" you definitely are missing out. Get it!

I'd have to recommend this game to all fans of classic point-and-click adventures! I recall trying this game out awhile ago but never got a chance to finish, and I am now happy to to have finally completed it. My only regret is that I am now a bit sad that another fantastic adventure has ended, leaving me with wanting more. You start out in a factory, but before you know it, you'll be traveling through virtual space, defending someone in court, and avoiding death by tentacles - yes, you're in for a fun ride! You'll meet a variety of interesting characters and will be accompanied by a sarcastic, humorous robot companion, who will oftentimes help you out with puzzles and get you out of trouble. This game has witty, often funny conversations, and it's only even better with the great voice acting found throughout the game. And the puzzles are moderate in difficulty; as someone who dislikes very confusing, illogical puzzles, I had a great time. You'll never have to deal with mazes or puzzles that don't make sense at all. To say the least, check out this game! For something that's free, what's the risk?

I wanted to love this cyberpunk point-and-click adventure. It begins with a dramatic and fun prologue shown in comic book panels, then throws you into a world of grime, danger, dystopia and sarcastic robots. The inversion of the usual stratification of rich and poor is an interesting twist, with the wealthy living in the shadows of skyscrapers at ground level and blue-collar laborers toiling at factories high in the sky, and there are a few surprises and laughs to be had through the adventure. Unfortunately, the gameplay is rather lacking, with lots of tedious backtracking, pixel-hunting of items (some of which blend almost perfectly into the background), and unbalanced puzzles. Some of the puzzles are fine, requiring common sense or some thought, but many depend on certain areas opening up unannounced after completing an unrelated task, or on solving obvious puzzles without any clear in-universe reason for doing so, then hoping the results will somehow be useful later. The game often abruptly dead-ends with no hints of what to do next, making the only viable strategy either consulting a walkthrough or using every item on everything until eventually some combination works in a way you never would have anticipated. The voice acting is decent and the dialogue is good, but conversations are short and to the point for the most part, leaving the world and characters feeling underdeveloped. The humor and wackiness mesh rather badly with the darker themes of the game, and the text very often doesn't quite match what the voice actors are saying, as well as some lines having only text and no voice, seemingly at random points, and some lines even seem to be missing from the game entirely. All these flaws combine to continually pull you out of the game world and lead to a stilted and unsatisfying story. I'm hoping the modern-day sequel will iron out these issues, because I'd like to get a fuller experience that lives up to this game world's potential.

The game is a good little adventure game, although somewhat illogical puzzle solving/progress at specific times. This illogic approach can provide frustrations on how to advance however and due to the dated graphics, some things can be easy to overlook and also help add to the frustration. However most of the time you forget these frustrations fast and if you ever were into adventure games, this game is absolutely worth the download and the time it takes to complete. It isn't terrible long, but the hours are mostly well spend. The humor in the game is the main selling point in my opinion. It is very well done, a lot of the time with great Monty Pyton-esque timing and some funny sequences which can make you laugh out loud. So definitely worth the download and trying it out. If nothing else for the "nostalgia" or simply to try out an iconic game in the genre. Be vigilant player one.