Posted December 31, 2018
high rated
Just finished and greatly enjoyed BENEATH A STEEL SKY. I'm a sucker for old-school point and click adventure games, especially SF ones, and this one paid off big time.
A few (NO SPOILER) notes that might be of use to new players...
1) Save often. There are a few "deaths" in the game, and while you are immediately given a chance to restore from your last save, and avoiding the death usually just means "Don't do that again", you don't want to lose a lot of progress.
2) There are a few needed items that are small and hard to see (my biggest grievance with games of this type). Search locations thoroughly.
3) Characters will tell you important information only ONCE, and then the conversation threads disappear. The only way to hear it again would be to load in a save from before the conversation and hear it again for the first time. Taking some notes while you play might be a good idea, especially if you play irregularly. Modern games handle this by keeping threads alive ("So, tell me again about...") or have a journal where important info is recorded for later viewing.
4) You don't need every item in the game, and there are no "dead ends", where you find that you can't proceed because of an action you failed to take earlier, and the location to do that action is now inaccessible. Aside from the odd character "death" (see point 1) you'll never need to restart the game from scratch to solve it.
5) Keep your robot pal Joey nearby. He can do things you can't, and can analyze objects you find for more information.
6) Some of the puzzles do require intuitive leaps of logic to solve, and you might find yourself trying the "use every item" method on another object, and be astounded when it works (but you never have many items at a time so this doesn't take too long). There's one puzzle in particular I thought was a little too difficult, but you might get that one in an instant and get stuck elsewhere. There's a walkthru provided in GOG Galaxy if you get too stuck.
Have fun!
A few (NO SPOILER) notes that might be of use to new players...
1) Save often. There are a few "deaths" in the game, and while you are immediately given a chance to restore from your last save, and avoiding the death usually just means "Don't do that again", you don't want to lose a lot of progress.
2) There are a few needed items that are small and hard to see (my biggest grievance with games of this type). Search locations thoroughly.
3) Characters will tell you important information only ONCE, and then the conversation threads disappear. The only way to hear it again would be to load in a save from before the conversation and hear it again for the first time. Taking some notes while you play might be a good idea, especially if you play irregularly. Modern games handle this by keeping threads alive ("So, tell me again about...") or have a journal where important info is recorded for later viewing.
4) You don't need every item in the game, and there are no "dead ends", where you find that you can't proceed because of an action you failed to take earlier, and the location to do that action is now inaccessible. Aside from the odd character "death" (see point 1) you'll never need to restart the game from scratch to solve it.
5) Keep your robot pal Joey nearby. He can do things you can't, and can analyze objects you find for more information.
6) Some of the puzzles do require intuitive leaps of logic to solve, and you might find yourself trying the "use every item" method on another object, and be astounded when it works (but you never have many items at a time so this doesn't take too long). There's one puzzle in particular I thought was a little too difficult, but you might get that one in an instant and get stuck elsewhere. There's a walkthru provided in GOG Galaxy if you get too stuck.
Have fun!
Post edited December 31, 2018 by dfstoronto
