After years of Amiga deprivation, I’m finally able to play Beneath a Steel Sky again, thanks to ScummVM and the generosity of Revolution Games! (UAE didn’t run it well)

Ah, the good old days of openly conspiring to steal things in full view of the victim, ridiculous actions that invoke the same response each time, crazy northern (and welsh!) accents, and screen upon screen of beautifully drawn artwork which contains a couple of game items that you must screen scrape for (and you might think, say, a cable, would be useful in all kinds of situations, but you actually have to attach it to an anchor and use it as a grappling hook - and nothing else). It’s like every adventure game ever.

A classic screenshot; almost as good as the whole game!

Steel Sky is actually the best non-Lucasarts graphical adventure game I can think of. For the record, here are the good ones, in only vague order of preference:

• Monkey Island 2
• Full Throttle
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Day of the Tentacle
• Monkey Island
• Sam and Max
• Curse of Monkey Island
• The Dig

Life, the cellular automaton (as opposed to Life, the thing that people who think Life, the cellular automaton, is great don’t have), is great. If you’ve never heard of it, have some links:

• Google search → Should return lots of relevant results.
• Life in a Java applet → Excellent implementation with good examples.

Load up that applet, open the (astonishing) Spacefiller pattern, change the rules to “Amazing” and click Go. You might get something that looks like this:

What do you see?

Aside from looking good, it’s a cool inkblot type picture. Do you see a maze? Or something else? The three people I’ve shown so far all saw the same thing. Hint: Obi-wan never told you about him.