'Beneath A Steel Sky' now on iPhone

After over 15 years away, Beneath A Steel Sky is back. The iPhone re-release, out this week, scales down one of the most celebrated point-and-click adventures down to a portable system, complete with remastered sound, new full-motion cutscenes at the beginning (and end) and a help system.

Not only have we managed to review the game, but we managed to speak to the duo behind it.

Review: Beneath A Steel Sky: Remastered

Interview with Charles Cecil and Dave Gibbons

As well as their thoughts on digital distribution and the future plans for Revolution Software, we were also interested in how long it took to develop the remastered version, a question we couldn't fit into the above feature.

So, how long did it take to develop?

[CC] "It was after Broken Sword [the Director's Cut released on Wii and DS earlier this year]. When did we finish Broken Sword, was it April?"

[DG] "Yeah, it hasn't been a very long process."

[CC] "So… six months. But it could have taken a month, obviously. But what we did was we converted it, and then we set it out to 20 or so fans, our beta testers, our street team we call them, and people gave us really good feedback.

"And the great thing is if you're communicating with fans, my God they don't worry at all about telling you the negative things. They tell you nice things as well, but they’re completely blunt. You ignore the advice at your peril. You take the comments they've made very, very seriously.

"There's some things we couldn't change, but originally, we thought, great, this was finished - this was about three months ago. Tony, our lead programmer and founder of Revolution, had the menus going portrait. People played the game and said you really have to change it. It's a really big issue."

Bet you wish you were part of that "street team", eh?

Have you picked up Beneath A Steel Sky? What are your thoughts on the conversion? Add a comment in the space below!