Download Beyond a Steel Sky and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. From Charles Cecil, creator of the Broken Sword series, with art direction by Dave Gibbons, legendary comic book artist behind ‘Watchmen’, comes ‘Beyond a Steel Sky’, the long awaited sequel to the cult classic ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’. Beyond a Steel Sky is a full-fledged continuation of the classic 1994 adventure of Beneath a Steel Sky. The title was created by the creators of the original, with Charles Cecil from Revolution Software studio and cartoonist Dave Gibbons at the forefront. Beyond a Steel Sky continues the threads of the previous production. The 2.0.0.16 version of Beneath a Steel Sky for Mac is available as a free download on our website. Beneath a Steel Sky for Mac lies within Games, more precisely Adventure. The actual developer of this Mac application is revolution. Our built-in antivirus checked this Mac download and rated it as 100% safe.
November 2019 Dev Diary - Back to Development!
Posted 09 / 12 / 19
Hello everyone, and welcome to another Developer diary for Beyond a Steel Sky !
Last month we had a look at some of our development team. This month we thought we’d get back to sharing a bit more behind what’s going into Beyond a Steel Sky.
First off, Beyond a Steel Sky will now be coming to you all in 2020, instead of 2019 as we had initially intended. Owing to a need to extend the development period, we've had to delay the release -but only by a few months. For more information you can read our article here about it.
So, what’s been happening this month?
Well, in short, a lot!
Voice recording for our characters is now underway. Those of you who played the demo at EGX last month will have heard a lot of voices have already been added, but now we’re recording the entire ensemble and getting them added into the project. For now we’re doing this section by section as we progress through the game. What this means is Union City is about to start buzzing with voices - both human and droid alike!
Looks like 2CU is happy to hear she's going to have a voice!
What this also means is that Dialogue is nearing completion and being reviewed. In Beneath a Steel Sky,the humour and dialogue stood out and really exemplified the dystopian and cyberpunk style of the game. We’re ensuring all the puns you're used to make their way into the game, and you'll be able to enjoy the same level and style of humour.
The music for Beyond a Steel Sky is also in production. A gorgeous orchestral score (if we say so ourselves!) that really brings out the atmosphere of the game, and enhancing the mystery of the narrative. We’ve always used Orchestral soundtracks for Broken Sword, and from that we know how to truly enhance a scene and add depth to a scene. We hope you’ll agree when you get to hear it!
And as always, animations are being tidied, motion-captured (or “mocapped”), and added to the game. We’ve still got a ways to go, but it’s a joy to see the game progress every day.
A great example is some of the progress this month is one of the animations you can spot in the Gameplay Trailer - getting refined, smoothed out, and less jerky:
Before and after. Spot the difference?
All of this hopefully indicates we’re all super busy bees in the Studio right now!
Rapid Iteration - Gameplay before Art.
Something we’ve somewhat ceased doing now (because we’re not really designing anything any more, but implementing) is “Rapid Iteration” - the idea of designing and implementing things quickly to gauge the success of an idea in the early stages of development.
One of the hardest things to gauge when designing a game, any game, is whether or not it’s fun. Many a project has completed its development, only to be unleashed upon the testers to a resounding “meh.”
Whilst a talented design team and years of experience can help mitigate the risk of a puzzle that falls flat or a cutscene that’s just too confusing, nothing beats seeing it for yourselves. These days, with the right tools, this is actually a lot easier than it ever was before.
For Beyond a Steel Sky, we’re using Unreal 4 as our game engine, and the game itself is made up of various modular components, carefully built to be versatile and robust in their function, that we can fit together like building blocks.
This means if we want to see how a scene plays out, a designer can grab the individual parts, snap them all together, and with a minimum of code and a sprinkle of dialogue, have a fully functional (albeit often a little rough around the edges,) puzzle to test out, and evaluate.
So, as an example from the earliest days of development, for this idea there's a citizen on a ledge who needs saving. We grab a person, an object and a trigger to tell us where he is, give him a simple behaviour tree and bam!: We have an element for a puzzle ready to go.
How’s this for a dramatic moment? A Citizen on a ledge going to fall!
Well, it’s great as long as you look past the fact that there's an open window there where they could easily be rescued through. We need some more creative solutions, so let’s redesign the scene a bit:
Beyond A Steel Sky Review
Ever wondered what a droid looks like on their tip-toes?
With a little tweak, the citizen is now in actual peril and how to rescue them can now be designed.
We call this technique “Rapid Iteration,” and rapid it truly is - we can bounce an idea around the team and get feedback immediately, ensuring that before a section moves to the concept art stage, the gameplay is confirmed as being on target.
For every puzzle you see in a finished game, you can bet that there are an equal number we tested out and found wanting - after all, if it’s not fun, it won’t make the cut, but some useful bits may be added to other designs. This puzzle idea was valuable to gauge the scene, but you won’t find it in Beyond a Steel Sky any more.
Once we’ve done the Rapid Iteration phase, we then move on to a full blockout for the section replacing the basic objects with custom code and artist produced placeholders and then (eventually) the final thing!
With this short, but hopefully juicy, bit of development insight we’re now working towards (and somewhat through) the Christmas holiday. In the New Year we’re hoping to start giving you some more accurate release information, and of course some more insights into how we’re making Beyond a Steel Sky - but gear up as they’ll be a bit more technical going forward. We’ll do our best to keep them easy to read, but increasingly informative for all of you hoping to see into the engine room of the development train.
So be sure to keep an eye on our social channels, on our Steam Page, and on our website. And, as always:
I’ve been playing Beyond a Steel Sky that has just been released on Apple Arcade. Beyond the Steel Sky is the highly anticipated sequel to the 1994 released Beneath a Steel Sky. So far, I’m enjoying the game. It reminds me of the good ol’ adventure games that I used to play during my teen years. But wait, this isn’t a review of the game.
With Apple Arcade, you can seamlessly play the game between all your Apple devices. For me, that’s mostly between my iPhone and iPad. But occasional, a game title like Beyond a Steel Sky drops. A game like this should be played on a Mac to fully appreciate the visuals. Here, I will share the visuals of the game running on my iPad Pro and MacBook Pro. But of course, with a Sapphire Pulse AMD RX 5700 XT sitting in a Raxer Core X eGPU enclosure.
Beyond a Steel Sky on the MacBook Pro powered by an AMD RX 5700 XT
Beyond A Steel Sky Soundtrack Download For Mac Free
Firstly, let’s take a quick look at the visuals of Beyond a Steel Sky on my Mac.
The AMD RX 5700 XT is quite a power horse. I set the game to run at the highest detail level. I’ve also set all the visual effects to the Epic setting.
The visuals on the MacBook Pro with a GPU like the AMD RX 5700 XT is very impressive. The lighting is a lot more natural when the settings are set at its highest levels.
Beyond A Steel Sky Wiki
Beyond a Steel Sky on the iPad Pro
The game is equally playable on the iPad with a game controller. I also observed that my 11″ iPad Pro (2018 model) doesn’t heat up even after long hours of play. Therefore I suspect that the settings are tuned down and is standard across all iPads at the moment. So while the visuals may not be as great, I do get a longer battery life when playing the game.
As you can see from the screenshot above, the lighting effect is clearly better on my Mac. On the iPad Pro, the colours are flatter.
A closer comparison
Here’s a few of screenshots I took in game of the same scene to get a better comparison.
On the MacBook Pro with a RX 5700 XT powering the game, much better lighting and colours is a given. But at the highest visual settings, you also get a depth of field and motion blur effects. This is hard to capture on a screenshot, However, I can definitely see it when playing the game.
At darker scenes like the screenshots below, the difference in colour and lighting is stark. While the game is still very playable on the iPad Pro, the visuals is simply day and night.
Update: In case you are wondering how Beyond a Steel Sky plays on the iPhone 11 Pro. Here’s a screenshot. The visuals looks the same as with the iPad Pro. But I personally would not recommend it. The screen is too small to really enjoy the game.
Tl;Dr: AMD RX 5700 XT on an eGPU is worth the investment
I wondered if it was worth getting the Razer Core X and the Sapphire Pulse AMD RX 5700 XT. It takes a cross platform game like Beyond a Steel Sky to show me that there is clearly a difference. So there you have it. If you can afford it, I continue to highly recommend a setup like this if you’re a primary MacOS user.
Oh, the game is really fun. The voice acting is great and the music adds to the atmosphere of the game. If you’re not on Apple Arcade, you will need to wait a little longer before it is released on other platforms. Otherwise, this is a perfect reason to subscribe to Apple Arcade. Games like Beyond a Steel Sky, Oceanhorn 2 and Shinshekai alone are worth a year’s subscription of Apple Arcade.