This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out Beneath a Steel Sky, a point-and-click adventure game created by Revolution Software and released in 1994. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to help people get into the game and a little background on it.
Why Should I Play It?
Even though it was released a few decades ago, it still holds up very well! It was an early game by Revolution Software, who would go on to create the Broken Sword series. The cyberpunk mystery was co-designed and features art by Dave Gibbons, most famously known as the artist for Watchmen, giving the game a distinct style. The game also has a charming mix of comedy and earnestness. The game became a cult hit and eventually led to a sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, in 2021.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s very easy to start playing the game. The game was made freeware in 2003 and is available on the ScummVM website. If you haven’t used ScummVM and want everything configured for you, it’s all set up in a free download on GOG.
This next part is completely optional. The ScummVM Music Enhancement Project is a site containing alternate/enhanced versions of soundtracks for games that run in ScummVM, They’re all available for free and have instructions for how to replace the music. If you would like to see how the two soundtracks compare, you can check out this video here and see what you like more.
Tips for Playing Beneath a Steel Sky
For the most part, Beneath a Steel Sky is easy to get into if you’ve played other point-and-click adventures but here’s a couple things to keep in mind when playing.
Read the Comic Prequel Packaged with the game was a comic that sets up the game and explains the backstory. For the most part this comic also appears in the game’s intro but it’s still worth reading to see an extended version with more art by Dave Gibbons. You can read the comic here.
Save Often You will want to save regularly and rotate between a few save files. There are a few points in the game where you can die and the game does not automatically restore you to a safe point when it happens. It’s not in a ton of places but it’s still a good idea to save just in case. It’s also a good idea to rotate between a few save files. There aren’t really any softlocks except technically at the end where forgetting an item in a room may lead to a dead end scenario in the next room, but it’s nothing to be concerned about as long as you have a couple save files you are actively switching between.
Using Hints is Ok Compared to a lot of adventure games from the era, Beneath a Steel Sky isn’t on the more difficult end of the genre. But everyone finds different puzzles to be difficult and if being stuck is ruining your enjoyment of the game, feel free to look up a hint. I think the page for the game on UHS Hints does a good job of helping with puzzles without giving away too much.
A year ago I wrote a couple of articles (here and here) recommending some indie adventure games for Halloween, and since it is the Halloween season again, or at least it is according to a lot of enthusiastic people, I thought I would do a few more recommendations.
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is a folk horror point-and-click adventure game developed by Cloak and Dagger Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games. I’m a big fan of both studios and even mentioned Football Game by Cloak and Dagger Games in a previous recommendation article. This may be their best game so far. The game features some fantastic art and sound. I especially love the use of light and color in the artwork. The game is very approachable for people newer to point-and-click adventures, with a more simplistic interface and never feeling too frustrating.
The Aching
I’ve mentioned this game on the blog before but it’s a very nice game and I’d love to see more people check it out. The Aching is a parser graphic adventure inspired by classic Sierra adventure games from the 80’s. I enjoyed the game’s horror setting and how it feels like a game from the 80’s without the frustrating softlocks you frequently run into in those games. I don’t mind death in adventure games but this game has a unique take on it where you must do things that would typically cause player death to proceed. I also think it’s cool that the game is built to run on DOS, although it has a DOSBox wrapper so it runs on Windows without any issues.
ParaMonsters and the Haunted Escape Room
If you’re looking for something a little less scary this Halloween season, check out ParaMonsters and the Haunted Escape Room. It’s a very short (30 to 60 minutes) and cute adventure game where you help a group of monsters investigate an escape room that may be haunted. It’s been in one or two of the big bundles on Itch too so you may already own it.
No Rest for the Wicked
No Rest for the Wicked is a short, comedy game where you are a vampire’s servant and must help him make the spell that will bring humanity to an end. The free game features voice acting, nice pixel art, and well-designed puzzles. But don’t take my word for it, it won the 2023 AdventureJam game jam, where teams have 14 days to develop an adventure game.
I was thinking about the large amount of freeware remakes of classic adventure games earlier this week and started putting together a list for myself to see what was out there and just to have something to revisit when I want to replay some of these games. For a period in the early 00’s, a lot of these remakes were a big deal to me because I either didn’t own the original game or didn’t know how to get them working on machines at the time so this was the only way I could play these games. Here’s the list I made, with the games sorted in alphabetical order. Some of the remakes are a bit older but with ScummVM now supporting Adventure Game Studio, you should be able to load them into there without issues. Let me know if I’ve left any good remakes out. I’m not saying that these remakes are better than the original game but I think it’s interesting they exist and I like seeing how people think they can improve on a game and how. It’s an incredibly amount of effort for free projects.
The Abbey of Crime
(Taken from Wikipedia) La abadía del crimen (The Abbey of Crime) is a video game written by Paco Menéndez with graphics made by Juan Delcán and published in 1987 by Opera Soft. It was conceived as a version of Umberto Eco’s 1980 book The Name of the Rose. Paco Menéndez and Opera Soft were unable to secure the rights for the name, so the game was released as La abadía del crimen.
The Abbey of Crime Extensum is a remake that updates the visuals while maintaining the style of the original game.
Barahir Barahir’s Adventure: Askar’s Castle is a remake of the game Barahir, originally created for the Atari 8-bit in 1993 and was only available in Polish. This remake translates the game to English and makes it playable on Windows and Linux. The remake also features 40 different palettes for you to switch between.
The Beast This remake of the ZX Spectrum game from 1988, with the original designer’s permission, makes it playable on modern machines while making various small enhancements to make it more accessible.
The Black Cauldron The Black Cauldron is a game based off the Disney movie, designed by Al Lowe and published by Sierra in 1986. This remake is a straightforward one that converts the game from using a text parser interface to a point-and-click one.
Black Sect Black Sect is a 1993 first-person adventure game by Lankhor, which is sort of a remake of their 1990 game La secte noir. The remake translates the game to English and has a few enhancements that make the game easier such as (text from MobyGames): Timeflow is based on player actions. This prevents missing important events. Unlimited save slots. 2 action cursors instead of more than 20 in the original game. Smart cursor that lights up over interactive areas. Extra puzzles. Changed puzzles to suit the new interface. Updated hint system. New sounds and music
Black Sect 2 This is an English remake of the French graphic adventure game ‘La Crypte Des Maudits’, originally released for the Amstrad CPC in French language only by Lankhor. The remake also lets you choose from various palettes that you can switch between while playing.
Chaluul’s Curse A remake in Adventure Game Studio of a game originally released in 1995 for DOS and in German language only as a bonus game on the cover CD of the German games magazine “PC Spiel”, issue 11/1995. The remake is in English and features music, rewritten puzzles to make them more logical, and extra responses to player actions.
Enclosure
Enclosure 3-D is a remake of the 2004 freeware adventure game but puts the game in an impressive 3D engine that maintains the style of the original game.
Gateway This remake of Gateway by Legend Entertainment converts the text adventure into a point-and-click adventure in the style of their later games, while keeping the art and music of the original game.
Grandad and The Quest for The Holey Vest This is a remake of the original Atari ST game from 1992 that makes the game playable on Windows and Linux and makes some changes to make the game easier to play: -Point-and-click system instead of the original game’s keyboard-only system -Graphical inventory items instead of the original game’s text-only list -No more softlocks -Removes time limit
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy This was a remake of the Infocom text adventure created by the BBC in the mid 00s which adds some graphics and some features to make it a little easier to play like a hint system and compass.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis It’s only a demo but fans of this game may find the 3D remake interesting.
Invincible Island This remake of a ZX Spectrum text adventure converts the game to an interface that can be played by disabled folks by only having to press the space bar for actions.
King’s Quest 1
There are a couple of remakes of King’s Quest 1. The most famous one remakes the game in a VGA art style, has an option to remove the softlocks, and adds voice acting, including the voice of Josh Mandel who voiced King Graham in some of the original Sierra games. AGD Interactive did a few remakes of Sierra games that you’ll see on here and then went on to create some commercial adventure games so consider checking those out and supporting them.
The other remake, King’s Quest 1 Redux, maintains the style of the original game but builds upon it by adding new features and extra polish, while cleaning up numerous small issues.
King’s Quest 2 AGD Interactive’s remake of King’s Quest 2 is a looser remake than their remake of King’s Quest 1. Much like that remake, it features new art and voice acting but dramatically redesigns areas of the game and expands it.
King’s Quest 3 There are a couple of King’s Quest 3 out there. Just like with King’s Quest 1 and 2, AGD Interactive has created a remake. It adds new art and voice acting and redesigns parts of the game. It doesn’t change as much as their King’s Quest 2 remake but also isn’t a 1:1 remake like they did for King’s Quest 1.
Infamous Adventures also created a remake of the game that updates the art. This one is a more straightforward remake of the game that keeps the design of the original but it does add new cutscenes, a few new characters, expanded narration or dialogue, additions and changes to some of the plot, full speech, new or modified locations, and Easter eggs. After creating a couple of remakes, they went on to create a couple of commercial adventure games inspired by Sierra, so consider checking their games out.
King’s Quest 4 King’s Quest 4: The Perils of Rosella Retold is a remake that converts the game to a point-and-click interface, removes the softlocks in the original game, and adds some of the assets from the Amiga version which are considered to be an improvement.
Maniac Mansion Maniac Mansion Deluxe updates the game to look more like Lucasarts adventure games from the early 90’s.
There is also a 3D remake called Meteor Mess. While I prefer pixel art, the remake does feature a lot of nice quality of life features like hotspot highlighting, removal of dead ends, and a new solution path for Jeff.
While it’s not complete, someone did a port of the NES version of the game to the Game Boy as a test.
Megacorp Megacorp Redux is a remake of the 1987 adventure game that changes some puzzles, maps, and adds more story elements
Quest For Glory 2 AGD Interactive’s remake of Quest for Glory 2 updates the graphics to a VGA style and makes some minor enhancements. The game supports the character import/export feature so you can import your character from Sierra’s original Quest for Glory 1 and import them into Quest for Glory 3 once you’ve completed the game.
Space Quest 2 This remake by Infamous Adventures updates the game to a VGA art style, point-and-click interface, and adds voice acting, while sticking to the design of the original game.
Space Quest 3 Space Quest 3D recreates the game in 3D and features new music and voice acting as well.
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If you are a fan of classic graphic adventures that use a parser, such as the King’s Quest and Space Quest series, then you’ll want to check out the modern parser adventure scene, where people are building new games that look and play like games from that era but updated to have a more robust parser and avoiding problems like softlocks.
My favorite of these is Snail Trek. It’s a fairly short episodic series where you play as a group of snails checking out a planet to see if it can be a new homeworld for them. I loved how flexible the parser was and how it would offer word suggestions. The player is also encouraged to check out player deaths because they’re humorous and will reload you back to before you made your mistake. The first episode of four is free.
Most of the modern parser graphic adventures seem to be on Itch so I made a list of them. I recommend playing all of them. None of them are too long and they all have something unique to offer. The Aching is a new game for DOS that has a Dosbox wrapper so you don’t have to do any weird configuration to play it in Windows. The Crimson Diamond is a mystery inspired by the classic Sierra game The Colonel’s Bequest. It’s currently in development so the download on the Itch and Steam page is just a demo but you can watch dev streams for the game every Tuesday. The Tachyon Dreams trilogy and Spy Quest series are by developers of modern adventure games like Blood Nova. Enclosure 3D is a remake of an adventure game from 2004 but with a really snazzy 3D engine that I would love to see applied to more parser games.
There’s also games not on Itch like Betrayed Alliance and Fortune and Glory, a text parser rpg that is currently in development. I’m sure there’s plenty of games I’m missing but it’s exciting seeing so many developers revisiting ideas from games in the 80s and building upon them.
There’s a ton of books about adventure games and interactive fiction. Here are some of the ones I recommend:
Hardcoregaming101.net Presents: The Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures
This is a collection of adventure game reviews from the site Hardcore Gaming 101. While it’s more focused on classic adventure games from the 80s and 90s, I think it’s a valuable resource for discovering old games and seeing how some people feel about some of the classic adventure games that everyone knows. If you bought the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on Itch.io from a few years ago, you already own a copy.
What Is Your Quest?: From Adventure Games to Interactive Books
This book by Anastasia Salter is an excellent history of the interactive fiction and adventure game genres. One thing that really impressed me was the coverage of the fan game community that popped up during the 00’s. This is an era that’s rarely discussed in discussions of the adventure game genre, so it was a delight to discover games I was unaware of.
Jane Jensen: Gabriel Knight, Adventure Games, Hidden Objects
This is another book by Anastasia Salter that I really enjoyed. This one is a history of Jane Jensen’s career. While most discussions of her career only cover her time making adventure for Sierra during the 90’s, this also goes into great details of her time making more casual games in the 00’s, her games from her Kickstarter, and her career now writing gay romance novels. Jane Jensen is my favorite designer at Sierra so I loved hearing about her career in casual games and why she moved on to writing novels.
The Sierra Adventure
The Sierra Adventure is an incredibly detailed history of the game developer Sierra. While the book is written by a huge fan of the company, it isn’t afraid to cover games that were poorly received and mistakes the company made.
The power was out at my home for two days last week so I was unable to do one of these, so here’s the FMV stuff I’ve been into lately. It’s a short one since I’ve only played one game but I thought it was cool. I previously mentioned that the game engine Narrat now supports video for its scenes and character portraits and the first game to use it was submitted to the Narrat game jam that just ended. A walk through the forest is a game where you walk on a trail, identifying plants and reading thoughts from the developer. I thought it was a pleasant game to play and it inspired me to work on two different things so hopefully I can share one of those in the next few weeks, depending on how busy I am. It’s a really nice and short game that’s playable in the browser so go check it out.
Here are some of the FMV games I played this week and other various FMV things that may be of interest.
After Hours
After Hours is a short student game released in 2019 by Bahiyya Khan. It is a vignette game about a young woman who was molested as a child and suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder as a result. I thought the game handled the subject very well and the performance by the designer was good too. I’m hoping that it gets a more public release someday but I believe you can still get the game by subscribing to Humble Choice and downloading the game through the indie game collection that subscribers get.
Virtua Bird Trainer: The Game
Virtua Bird Trainer: The Game is a short adaptation of a Youtube video which replicates the aesthetics of Sega Saturn games. It’s a short, fun game by the creator of Indiepocalypse, which you should also check out.
Murderous Muses
Earlier this week the Youtube channel Conversations with Curtis, which is hosted by the lead of the 90s FMV game Phantasmagoria 2, had an interview and Let’s Play with Tim Cowles from D’Avekki Studios for the studio’s newest game Murderous Muses. It’s a good interview and the game looks interesting too. Turns out it just went on sale on Steam yesterday so I guess I’ll pick it up now.
Narrat
Last night I saw that the interactive fiction/rpg game engine Narrat now supports video. From looking at other things made with the engine, the dialog and text usually seems to follow a format more like you’d see in a game like Disco Elysium so it seems like some really interesting stuff could be made in it.
My New Game
I also released a FMV game earlier this week. The game isn’t anything amazing (outside of the lead actress) but I had a good time working with the engine and want to use it more. I used the Charles Engine, a package for Unity that lets you easily create choice based FMV games. The engine was created by Charles Games, who previously made some other games I liked. I bought the plugin when it first came out and then just….sorta forgot. But I really enjoyed using it and the game got many more downloads than I expected so I’m hoping to make more FMV games in the near future.
For research for something I’m working on, and also just because I genuinely like them, I’ve started playing a lot more games with FMV in them and I guess I should write about them so people have more games to check out. No idea how often I’ll do this but maybe you’ll discover some neat stuff.
Internet Court
A pleasant surprise this week was Internet Court. I had seen previous games by the studio show up on Steam before but never really heard much about their games but a positive review on Adventure Gamers was enough to get me to check it out during the Steam sale and I’m glad I did. If you watch the trailer, you can tell that it’s extremely low budget and maybe doesn’t feature the most professional actors but even with its lack of polish (or because of it?) it is extremely charming. It’s just very silly fun but never leans into doing an intentionally bad thing on purpose. The game’s Steam page jokes about the game only having one actual actor but everyone involved, including the moms of the developers, gives it their all to delivery genuinely funny performances and I’m looking forward to checking out other games by the studio.
Markus Ritter – The Lost Family
This is a weird one. Markus Ritter is a short FMV game inspired by 90s adventure games like the Gabriel Knight, and especially the second Gabriel Knight game, down to having the player character having the last name Ritter and at least one other Gabriel Knight reference thrown in there. I have no idea what to rate it. It plays fine. The game takes itself so seriously but the acting is pretty goofy, and not all of it intentionally, that it ends up being amusing and charming in its own way I guess? Even the rough edges are unintentionally charming, like the many shots where the lead actor walks back to the camera to turn it off and it shakes a little when they do that and they just don’t clip that part out of the final product. I guess it has a sequel in August and I’m curious about it so it did something right. I’m being rough on it but it’s free so check it out if you’re really into 90s point-and-click adventure games with FMV like I am. It has some nice quality of life stuff in there too, like a built-in hint system and being able to highlight all the spots you can click on.
Aran’s Bike Trip
I wasn’t sure if I should put this in here since I don’t think there’s really any FMV in here, just 360 panorama photos you can interact with, but it’s neat so I’m putting it in here anyway. Aran’s Bike Trip is a game by Sokpop Collective, a small group that has been making a variety of short games for years, where you follow someone along on a biking trip one of the developer’s took. All you do is look at panoramic photos of the Dutch countryside while looking at notes from the designer and listen to calming music but it’s very nice. Sometimes a game can just be an excuse to look at photos of beautiful places in the world.
Date Me
I also wanted to check out some of the FMV games on Itch so I downloaded Date Me, a very short and gay dating sim created (I think) by university students. It’s funny and free so you might as well try it if that sounds like something you’re interested in but my biggest takeaway from it was mostly that I’m very jealous of college students doing goofy games like this instead of the boring, massive projects that people in my computer club were trying to push when I was in school. Where were the people like this?! This is far more exciting and was actually completed. Oh well.
Played Inca, an adventure game/rail shooter by Coktel Vision and released in 1992 about Incas and conquistadors fighting in space. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is! You journey through time and space to grab some important looking orbs to become El Dorado and bring the rebirth the Inca empire, all while fighting conquistadors flying boats in space. The game has you alternating through these shooting segments (there’s also some on foot) with traditional point-and-click adventure game parts. Since this is a French DOS game, none of it is really that well designed but it’s all fascinating and certainly a lot more playable than other DOS games that hop around between different genres, even with the difficulty spikes. I’ll definitely play Inca 2 at some point because the weird combination of it all and the FMV is very interesting to me.
I’ve been playing Goblins 3 this month for Adventure Game Club, which is by the same developer, so it’s fun looking at the credits and seeing that the people involved with that goofy game also worked on this right before that game. I don’t know if I could recommend it because it certainly is a clunky game, but it’s easy to get running in DOS Box if you want to try it and it has passwords and stuff you can do to make the action segments a little bit easier. I would definitely recommend watching the intro which starts off normal enough and then suddenly shifts into “what the hell am I watching?”
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the series Gobliiins, a point-and-click adventure game series created by Pierre Gilhodes and Muriel Tramis. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to help people get into the series and a little background on the games. There are five games in the series. The first three were released in 1991, 1992, and 1993. Many years later, after Coktel Vision had shut down, Pierre Gilhodes created a Gobliiins 4 in 2009 and recently released Gobliiins 5 in 2023, after getting funding for it on Kickstarter. The number of i’s in a Goblins game changes based on the number you play as. So Gobliins 2 has two playable goblins and Goblins 3 (also known as Goblins Quest 3 in the US) has one playable goblin at the start, but you have other playable characters as well.
Why Should I Play It?
The Gobliiins series is an entertaining series of point-and-click adventure games that have great art, animation, and music, with really charming sound effects and talking noises for the characters as well. If your interest in adventure games is more focused on the puzzles than plot, which isn’t a big focus for this series, then I would recommend these games. The puzzles can be challenging but even failure can be fun to watch in these games and for the most part (with the exception of the first game) you cannot die or lose in a Gobliiins game so you are encouraged to try everything to see what funny results occur even when it’s not the correct solution.
How Do I Get Started?
Fortunately it’s very easy to get most of the games in the series. Goblins 1-3 are available in a pack on GOG, which includes both the floppy disk and cd-rom versions of the games, which all run in ScummVM. While I’m fine with the cd-rom versions of the games since that’s what I grew up with, many people prefer the floppy disk versions due to them having a different soundtrack. Some people even prefer the Amiga version of Gobliins 2 over the PC versions since that has a different soundtrack. So when playing these games, I would maybe just go on youtube and listen to brief snippets of the soundtracks to see what you prefer but if you don’t feel like doing that, it’s probably safer to go with the floppy disk versions. Unfortunately Gobliiins 4 is now abandonware and you’ll have to find it on your abandonware site of choice. Gobliiins 5 is available on Itch and coming to Steam very soon.
This next part is where things might be a little controversial. If you’re looking for a game to start with in the series, a lot of people would recommend Goblins 3 and I would agree with this. It has the most solid game design of the three original games and some of the best art in the series too. Plus the series is so light on plot that you won’t be confused by anything if you skip ahead and will just miss some references. Gobliiins 1 is very hard to recommend to beginners due to its health meter. So much of the humor in the series is connected to failing or seeing your characters get hit in a cartoonish way and the first game will remove health anytime this happens, almost defeating the point of the game. Your health bar also carries over between levels and there are only one or two places in the game where you can refill it, meaning you either have to replay levels after you figure them out and not lose health, or the game almost becomes unplayable towards the end. I would also hesitate to recommend Gobliins 2 to beginners even as a fan, due to some of the frustrating puzzle design. The game has two characters that have the same abilities but sometimes requires you to arbitrarily use one to solve a puzzle. It also has puzzles requiring chains of actions that must be executed perfectly or else you have to redo the whole puzzle.
That all said, if you play through Goblins 3 and enjoy it, I would recommend playing the others if you want more. If you want to check the game out, consider playing it with us in the Adventure Game Club, where it is our game for June.
