PATCH #5: Free Developer Commentary and 40% off, as a treat
Beyond a Steel Sky · published
HAPPY NEW YEAR - WE HAVE GREAT NEWS
- 40% OFF Beyond A Steel Sky, as a treat
- Developer Commentary Update
- Dave Lowe has new music and a documentary
It's been a wild first month of the year..
40% OFF BEYOND A STEEL SKY
We're a month into 2021 and it's already been way harder than it needed to be. You deserve a break.
If Beyond A Steel Sky has been on your Wishlist for a while because you just couldn't justify spending money right now, we totally get it.
Beyond A Steel Sky is now -40%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1146310/Beyond_a_Steel_Sky/
This is the most we've ever discounted our game.
If you're familiar with our games, you know we pride ourselves on fair pricing, to make gaming both accessible, yet sustainable for us as a small independent company, but we hope that this temporary discount goes a long way for some of you.
DEVELOPER COMMENTARY
Beyond A Steel Sky is almost half a year old and that calls for celebration!
Throughout this time, we have hugely valued our relationship with our community, our players, and your enthusiasm to hear of our development plans.
So a full blown in-depth behind the scenes developer commentary update from the entire team seemed like the perfect fit!
We offer you an insight into our thoughts, our intentions, and our little hidden jokes and references:
👒 Why the beanie?
🏃 What's the benefit of in-house motion capture?
🥓 How do we get Dave Gibbons to talk more about bacon butties?
All those questions, and more, are addressed by Charles Cecil, Dave Gibbons, the scripting team, the animation team, our artists, and many more of the talented people we had the honour to work with!
WHO'S ON THE COMMENTARY TRACKS?
- Charles Cecil:
As Creative Director, Charles used his experience of over thirty years to manage the project as a whole, covering every aspect of the games development from big-picture story writing and complex puzzle designs, to the shape and size of the Mini-Knackwurst sausage. - Kevin Beimers:
Kevin was involved in Beyond a Steel Sky since before the first line of code was written; alongside a quirky disposition, Kevin brought decades of writing and design experience to the team, giving life to the characters of Union City with outlandish jokes and unique personalities. - Ross:
After starting his career at Revolution, Ross returned after years of AAA development experience to lead the overall game and level design on Beyond A Steel Sky - this included heavy involvement in the narrative and puzzles throughout the game. You can thank Ross for ensuring no puzzle came close to the trauma of Broken Sword 1’s Goat. - Nina:
As Lead Scripter, Nina was responsible for the implementation of Beyond a Steel Sky - a huge undertaking for the studio’s first project in the Unreal Engine; when she wasn’t writing heaps of killer code, she’d be playing her part in the narrative and puzzle design of the game. - Luke:
Luke was one of the level designers and overall fix-it gurus on Beyond A Steel Sky, leading the charge on the Desert, Reflections, and Land Train Office sections. His greatest battle, however, came in the form of a giant magnetic crane and its sidekick - 4YR. - Em:
Em was one of the leading animators on the game. Specializing in motion capture and facial animation, Em was able to bring life to the ridiculous character dialogue through expressive gestures - it’s all in the eyebrows. - Dave Gibbons:
The man who needs no introduction, Dave Gibbons brings a lifetime of pop culture illustration experience to the Art design - from the characters and costumes of our post-modern citizens, to the shine-polished architecture of Joey’s new regime. His proudest addition, however, is the conception of the Mini-K sausage, inspired by a bacon sandwich he once tasted in the 90’s. - Noirin:
The unsung hero of Beyond a Steel Sky, Noirin keeps the studio aloft as COO of Revolution Games. Using decades of experience with major corporations and publishers, Noirin juggles both the internal and external elements of production. - Alistair:
Working with Pitstop Studios, Alistair composed the soundtrack for Beyond A Steel Sky, combining traditional orchestral elements with more contemporary sounds, and in doing so sought to achieve a tone that brought nostalgia to our traditional audience whilst inspiring new-comers to the sci-fi adventure genre. - Matthew:
As well as his responsibilities for the design and implementation of Beyond a Steel Sky, Matthew managed the games’ dialogue, from writing branching dialogue trees and edgy one-liners, to the casting and voice recording of the English release. Between these roles, Matthew just about had enough time to check his hair.
"OMG HOW DO I TURN THIS ON RIGHT NOW"
If you've played Beyond A Steel Sky before, and click on "New Game" it will give you a pop-up to turn on Developer Commentary.
In an existing game you can always turn it on and off in the in-game options!
If you're a new player, you can also find the Developer Commentary in the options, but we want to warn you; there are a lot of spoilers meant to lift the curtain on the thoughts, challenges, and meaning that went into making this game and its puzzles. So choose wisely..
SOME CHANGES WE'VE MADE
🎵 NEW CREDITS BOPS
The end credits music now plays a remix of the original Beneath a Steel Sky intro music by Dave Lowe, the legendary 8-bit composer. Very cool.
⛵ SHOWING YOU THE ROPES
We're learning! So we're super pleased with presenting you our new onboarding features.
- Touch devices will now get a small animated tutorial, fresh from scatch!!
- Improved how to tell when you can use something from increased range! Fun!
- Tutorial text improvements in text, but also in MINOS! We went all out.
This should make it easier for complete newcomers to orientate. Games are for everyone!!!
🌐 BIG UPDATE
This update is pretty sizable, but for very good reasons!
We want to do better, and take up less space on your hard drives. So this update will be re-compressing your files! Exciting!! We were hoping to get away with it since this is the commentary update, but we can't lie to you. We love you too much!
SPEAKING OF DAVE LOWE..
Many of you may be familiar with Dave Lowe, aka Uncle Art, from his fantastic body of work. He is the composer behind Beneath A Steel Sky's soundtrack, and in fact, most computer game music in the 80s and 90s, across over 70 game titles.
Well he's making music again, and it's incredible..
Dave Lowe and his daughters Lucy and Holly have re-interpreted, and re-recorded Dave's incredible body of work in this album titled "A Temporal Shift"
And even better, you can follow Dave Lowe's inspiring journey.
If you ever wanted to peek behind the scenes of the intersection between the music industry and the games industry, this documentary is for you.
It's on Prime Video and it's free for those with Amazon Prime, at least here in the UK. We even have a little teaser, and an incredibly emotional Charles..
WATCH THE FULL DOCUMENTARY
"UNCLE ART" ON PRIME VIDEO
AND AS ALWAYS:
Join our Discord: discord.gg/revolutionsoftware
We are on there all the time, and on Fridays we even play games together with our Community.
We'd love to see more of you there!
We love you all very much, and hope that this reflects in how much effort we've put into this game.
All the best from the whole team at Revolution