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'Beneath a Steel Sky' finally has a sequel and it's coming to Apple Arcade
One of the most iconic cyberpunk games of the '90s and early-2000s, a point-and-click adventure called Beneath a Steel Sky, is finally getting a follow-up. Beyond a Steel Sky will hit Apple Arcade later this year, coming directly from original creators Charles Cecil and Dave Gibbons. Gibbons is a legendary graphic-novel artist best known for collaborating with Alan Moore on Watchmen, while Cecil is a co-founder of Broken Sword and Beneath a Steel Sky studio, Revolution Software.
Broken Sword Kickstarter didn't hit 'Beneath a Steel Sky 2' goal, sequel is a go anyway
Revolution Software asked for $400,000 to Kickstart the fifth installment of its point-and-click-adventure franchise, Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse. The Kickstarter closed with $771,561, leaving the team more than $800,000 including PayPal donations.The Serpent's Curse included stretch goals after cresting the initial amount, and it hit three of them, but fell short of the $1 million goal that would have greenlit a sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky. Revolution plans to develop Beneath a Steel Sky 2 regardless of the stretch goal misfire, studio co-founder Tony Warriner tells Develop."We're delighted by the recent level of interest in a sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky and are currently discussing design ideas for this project, which we plan to go into development following the release of Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse," Warriner says. "We're deeply touched that our Steel Sky fans are as enthusiastic today as they were when the original game released in 1994."The Serpent's Curse hit goals to restore the "Director's Cuttings" and include more game content, add exotic locations in North Africa and the Middle East, and add one backer's likeness and name to the game.The Serpent's Curse should be available for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android devices in early 2013.
Beneath a Steel Sky gets sequel if Broken Sword Kickstarter hits $1 million
After hitting its $400,000 target yesterday, the Broken Sword: the Serpent's Curse Kickstarter just went up a notch. Should the fundraiser now reach $1 million then 'Beneath a Steel Sky 2' also gets greenlighted. We're used to bonuses after Kickstarter targets are reached early, but Revolution Software's is a real double whammy.Revolution remastered the 1994 classic three years ago for iOS, but the British developer is desperate to continue the cyberpunk point-and-click adventure. With the Serpent's Curse Kickstarter approaching $0.5 million with half its allowed time to go, a Beneath a Steel Sky sequel is certainly looking plausible.Revolution announced other targeted bonuses after getting funded yesterday. $500,000 worth of donations sees Serpent's Curse come with director's cut goodies, $650,000 brings two extra locations for George and Nico to explore, and $800,000 lets Revolution realise its "wildest ambitions" with the game. That last one is a bit vague, but our eyes were drawn to "the return of the infamous goat."
Broken Sword developer joins comic artist Dave Gibbons for new game
Revolution Software, the team behind Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword, is teaming up with graphic novel artist Dave Gibbons for a new title, Eurogamer reports. Gibbons is responsible for the art and lettering of Alan Moore's Watchmen, and is currently the artist on Marvel's The Secret Service, written by Kick-Ass author Mark Millar.Gibbons and Revolution founder Charles Cecil have collaborated before, with Gibbons contributing to Beneath a Steel Sky and providing art and a digital prequel comic for Broken Sword: Director's Cut. Gibbons says the new game is in an unexplored area that isn't France and isn't catacombs. He'll have story input and direct the look of the whole thing, even if he doesn't do all of the artwork himself."It's going to be something that combines a lot of the things I'm perhaps best known for, which are a design sense and a sense of symbolism and maybe an obsessive attention to background detail," Gibbons says. "It will look like a Dave Gibbons game. There would be no point in Charles collaborating with me if it was going to look like a Joe Blow game." Not to be confused with "a Jon Blow game," of course.
Best of the Rest: Xav's Picks of 2009
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Upon release, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars immediately found its way on my top five games of 2009. With its style, humor and variety it's clear Rockstar was trying to shine a new light on the popular franchise. Not only that, Rockstar took chances in hopes to attract a similar audience to a handheld GTA as it has on consoles. From a new class of criminal, fighting for honor and turf in Liberty City to an addictive (albeit, mostly cloned from Drugwars) illegal narcotic mini-game, Chinatown Wars felt like a breath of fresh air. Sadly, the game was a commercial disaster, relative to its console-based siblings. Be that as it may, Chinatown Wars was not only my favorite on-the-go game of the year, it was easily one of the best games to release across any platform in 2009.
Beneath a Steel Sky Remastered nears 20K sold; Revolution expects 100K lifetime sales
The modern jazzification (totally not a made-up word) of retro adventure title Beneath a Steel Sky has been a fairly lucrative move on Revolution Software's part, as managing director Charles Cecil says (via GI.biz) iPhone remake Beneath a Steel Sky Remastered is on track to sell 20,000 copies in its first month -- and that's not including the first week of the month, as it wasn't available in the App store until October 8. But it's just a stepping stone to greater financial success, Cecil says. He anticipates the game will sell around 70,000 copies in its first year of release, eventually peaking at 100,000 copies sold in its lifetime. Cecil credits the Apple model (cheap, easy to use and easier to purchase content than it is to pirate) and Revolution's ability to exploit its own games "in a way that you could never do at a mainstream publisher." He also says that daily sacrifices to the almighty Lord Kromdor certainly didn't hurt.* *Yes, we made up that last one, silly. Revolution worships Cthulhu, duh!
Beneath a Steel Sky is now Inside the iPhone App Store
If you've just completed The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition on your iPhone and are eager for more prettied-up vintage adventure gaming, may we submit for your consideration Revolution Software's Beneath a Steel Sky Remastered? Actually, there's no need for us to, because it's already been submitted ... to the App Store. All right, that was a pretty awkward way to say it, but the point is that you can buy the game now for $4.99, a slightly higher price than the $2-3 designer Charles Cecil expected to charge. But still, a world in which you can buy a classic adventure game for five bucks and play it anywhere is quite a bit nicer than, say, the cyberpunk dystopia predicted by the game itself.Beneath a Steel Sky: Remastered ($4.99):
Beneath a Steel Sky remastered for iPhone
We are in the midst of a full-blown adventure game renaissance, thanks to the sudden proliferation of new adventure games and the (long-awaited) rediscovery by publishers of their own back catalogs. The latest adventure game to be brought back is Revolution Software's Beneath a Steel Sky, which may be best known these days for the fact that it's available for free and works with ScummVM.The new version, Beneath a Steel Sky Remastered, won't be free and won't run in ScummVM, but it will have the advantage of running on iPhone. The update will include new content like fully-animated cutscenes from Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons. Creator Charles Cecil expects to charge around $2 or $3 for the title."Yes, you can jailbreak your phone and play the game for free," he told Eurogamer. "But if you like the game and like the kind of games we make, then pay us a little bit of money and, if it's a big enough success, we can reinvest the funds. We can start to look at a potential BASS sequel."According to the announcement, the iPhone version will be out this fall. Revolution Pocket has plans for other mobile platforms, including Android, PSP Go, and DSiWare.
Revolution considering new Beneath a Steel Sky, Broken Sword games
Revolution Software is stepping up efforts to bring back some of its classic adventure IPs. Founder Charles Cecil currently has two games in mind: Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword. The latter series is already undergoing a revival via next month's Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templars (Director's Cut); however, Cecil tells VideoGamer this might only be the beginning. If the Director's Cut of Shadows of the Templars for Wii and DS are successful, Revolution might consider doing more Director's Cuts for the other Broken Sword titles. This might even entail completely overhauling the 3D Broken Swords (numbers three and four in the series) into 2D versions for Nintendo's systems. A movie tie-in game could also be in the works, as Cecil reveals that Radar Pictures is interested in doing a Broken Sword film. In the case of Beneath a Steel Sky – another adventure title from the '90s – Cecil says it's "probably going to happen." He's just claiming everyone's too busy to work on it right now. Well, of course; with all those possible Broken Sword projects, it sounds like Revolution will be busy for awhile.
The DS Life: First-person gaming
The DS Life is a weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handhelds and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at dsfanboy dot com.We're breaking away from our usual routine this week -- instead of fawning over touching scenes of handheld gamers, we'll look through ten pictures taken from the gamers's point of view. These photographs can reveal a lot about the shutterbugs who took them! You know, besides what game they were playing at the time.
