Beneath a steel sky background
So, it wasn't going to be possible to write another adventure game during the early 2000s because retailers didn't want them, publishers didn't want to fund them, and there was no way to self-fund back then.
We also then released it for free, which was very helpful. So, when we were invited to covermount the game it went to about 1.5 million people, can you imagine that today? That's one of the reasons why so many young people that have come though remember the game. The game came out and achieved 9 out of 10 in all the PlayStation magazines, which at the time the Official PS magazine had a monthly circulation of 600,000 copies every month. Nobody was very interested - Virgin had no interest and frankly, Sony didn't either.īeneath a Steel Sky launched in 1994 on MS-DOS and Amiga home computers The really funny thing about that is that we convinced Sony to publish Broken Sword 1. The publishers were absolutely obsessed by the fact that the PlayStation audience was made up of young men who wanted to play visceral 3D games. The reason for that was not because no one wanted to play them anymore, it was because retailers had limited slots that they could stock games in, devoting more and more towards PlayStation and fewer towards PC.
Well, when we were working with Virgin in the 90s - who was a great publisher – at that time the adventure game was an incredibly popular genre, however by the end of the decade, publishers decided that it was dead - and to an extent it was. Where did the initial idea for the game come from to do the sequel after such a huge gap between the original and sequel? I wanted to create a game that people recognised and felt familiar with but was completely different, hopefully getting the best of both worlds. It also allowed us to move forward with technology. The reason for that is that we wanted enough to have changed that new players could come in without the feeling that they've lost anything, but enough that the original players were interested to go back. So, when we came to planning Beneath a Steel Sky, there had been a gap of 26-years but in the game, there had been a gap of 10-years. We're very lucky that we've had this extraordinary following for the game. Then there was this cheer that went out when I mentioned Beneath a Steel Sky, and these are people that were likely not born the first time it came out. The defining moment was probably two to three years ago when I was in Uruguay giving a talk to some industry folk - mostly quite young people. The publishers were absolutely obsessed by the fact that the PlayStation audience was made up of young men who wanted to play visceral 3D games Charles Cecil
So many people have told us it's one of their favourite games ever. The game has kept the most extraordinary level of enthusiasm and became a cult adventure game. : Can you start off by telling us about Beyond a Steel Sky?Ĭharles Cecil: Beyond a Steel Sky has its genesis in Beneath a Steel Sky, which Revolution wrote with Dave Gibbons 26 years ago in 1994.
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This week we spoke with Revolution Software co-founder Charles Cecil about making a sequel to Beneath a Steel Sky 26-years after it originally launched. To highlight all of the hard work that often goes on unseen in the background, is reaching out to developers to learn more about the general rigmarole of releasing a video game, with our ' Making Of' series. And in the current mobile market, that's only the first step in having a successful game. No matter the size of the game or how long it ultimately took to make, each new title involves a lot of hard work, hard decisions, and a little bit of luck before it even gets out the door and onto devices. The process in creating a game is a difficult, long and often stressful process, but it's one that can reap many awards alongside actually seeing your ideas come to life.