Beneath a Steel Sky is a historical game released in the mid-'90s for MS-DOS, and that quickly became one of the favorites of millions of users worldwide. Almost a quarter of a century later, its source code has been released so that we can enjoy it on our computers without even needing the ScummVM emulator, which was once necessary to run it.

The truth is that the success of Beneath a Steel Sky was initially because it took full advantage of a technology called Virtual Theatre System, which provided it with a graphic section well above the average of the time. Of course, anyone who is more accustomed to games released recently on last-generation consoles will see it as a bit crappy. Still, it is an interesting retro release, even from the visual point of view.

As far as the plot is concerned, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of Robert Foster, the story's real protagonist, a character whose story begins complicated when the plane he is traveling falls precipitously to the ground. However, he manages to flee from his captors and hides in a city building, where a large part of the action this title has prepared for us will take place.

You'll see, as you advance, that we have to move in an extraordinary world in which issues such as environmental pollution stand out, or also the gray blocks of bland buildings behind which death can hide, of course. Although the title has elements more typical of action or a shooter, you will have to test your ability to solve situations as if they were a puzzle.

What is Beneath a Steel Sky's gameplay about? Above all, it's about survival. And to do so, we have to aim at our enemies and shoot, a straightforward mechanic allowing us to use the mouse and the keyboard to move our character in the appropriate direction. You can also interact with the context, such as other people -as long as they are harmless- or objects.

It will be essential, in all cases, that you follow with precision all the clues that appear in front of you since they are there for a reason, and if you have clarity of thought, you will see that the dialogues will allow you to solve the riddles quickly. At least the ones we have tried to solve, we have been able to overcome after a few minutes, so we do not doubt that most users will have the same success.

If you don't want to lose your games, you have to know that the F5 key is specially set to save the progress we have made so that when we restart the title, or if we lose our lives, we can continue from that place. This is extremely important to keep in mind because if you haven't stored your progress, you will find that when you start another game, you will have to do it from the beginning.

Who should we recommend that you download Beneath a Steel Sky? In the first instance, to any player who considers themselves a lover of the classics, we are in the presence of a game that has made history. It is also remarkable that the entertainment mode is simple and easy to intuit in terms of movements. However, little by little, the challenges become more complicated, and that makes it quite addictive.

On the negative side, we could mention one aspect: the dialogues between the characters sometimes are somewhat tedious, to the point of wanting to skip them in any way possible to move forward with the action. The drawback is that we can't always skip them, which is why we point out this issue as one of the few we would have liked to be given otherwise, although that dialogue system was standard then.

Beyond that, we must say that having been installed and run without any emulator in between, we had some doubts about the game's stability. These doubts were cleared after a couple of hours of entertainment because it has not caused any problems. This means that no additional programs are needed to enjoy it and that we will not go through forced closures or screen freezes.

So, we conclude that all those who like retro games, with all the good and bad that imply having belonged to that generation, have an inescapable appointment with Beneath a Steel Sky soon on their laptops or desktops.

Finally, we cannot fail to point out that a version of Beneath a Steel Sky for mobile devices, iPhone, from the people of Apple, was recently released, so if you have one of them, you can enjoy all the entertainment also on your phone, with a proposal that has also been remastered to better adapt to the screen of this type of equipment.