Beyond a Steel Sky Review: Back to Union City
Beyond a Steel Sky is a serviceable sequel and evolution to the cult original, but bares the scars of its QA testing with various crashes and bugs.
Beyond a Steel Sky initially launched for the Apple Arcade, but has been recently ported onto the PC. Beyond a Steel Sky sees players venture back into the cyberpunk utopia known as Union City. The decrepit locals, goofy characters, and fully three-dimensional world sees this niche franchise both evolve and iterate on itself. While a lot of Beyond a Steel Sky's predecessor's quirks remain, the jump into three-dimensional gameplay and exploration was surprisingly smooth. Traversing the world is simple, and the puzzles that litter the atmosphere are placed in such a manner as to naturally lead the player to the next set of obstacles.
Some may be familiar of the origins of the Steel Sky series. Its humble roots began in a 1994 point-and-click adventure title Beneath a Steel Sky, which offers a comic-book adventure that allows players to explore cyberpunk locals. The sequel transitions the genre but not the setting, retaining the comic book aesthetic but evolving the narrative. Cyberpunk is very popular at the moment, and Beyond a Steel Sky is situated to capitalize on that popularity with a release on PC.
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