Beyond a Steel Sky

Beyond a Steel Sky stands out because it tries to revive old-school point-and-click adventure design with a larger, more modern city setting. By our assessment, its best quality is the focus on exploration, dialogue, and puzzle solving in a world that wants to be poked at rather than rushed through. The trade-off is that adventure games like this can feel slow if someone wants combat, action, or constant hand-holding. In practice the pleasure comes from moving between characters and systems, noticing what matters, and working out where the game is hiding its next answer. It sits closer to classic narrative adventures than to action games, and it will suit people who enjoy reading spaces as much as solving them.