GOG's free Revolution adventures

By Tom Bramwell Published 18 December, 2008

Steel Sky/Temptress in Vista/XP clothing.

GOG.com has released Beneath a Steel Sky and Lure of the Temptress, both swaddled in the site's Vista and XP-compatible wrapper, for free today as a special "holiday" gift.

Both games are the work of the lovely Charles Cecil's Revolution Software and came out in the early 90s, and both are now freeware, hence the price, or lack of one.

Up to now, the data files for the disk and CD versions have been compatible with ScummVM - the adventure game fan's wrapper of choice - but GOG.com obviously hopes its big, friendly Vista/XP compatibility will persuade people to take them up there.

The site was created to deliver old (and some relatively recent) games to modern PC gamers in user-friendly, DRM-free downloadable packages for 6 of 10 dollars apiece.

Recent additions include Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, the older Fallout titles and Freespace 2, although you can't go too far wrong with TOCA Race Driver 3 either.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • PearOfAnguish #1 3 years ago

    Nice. BASS is one of the best adventures ever.

  • Xerx3s #2 3 years ago

    LOL? I can't register because their input fields turn every letter into gibberish.

  • hiddenranbir #3 3 years ago

    Yay cheap games.

  • septimus #4 3 years ago

    Great service, been using it since early beta and has never not worked as it should.

  • ianegg #5 3 years ago

    Free is a nice price, but the Beneath a Steel Sky iso has been free to download legally for years, and not only is ScummVM XP and Vista (and Linux, and Wii, and DS, and Windows Mobile etc. etc. etc.) compatible, but it offers enhancement options to interpolate the graphics etc.

    Other than getting the comic book, I fail to see the point of this version. Especially if it's only free for today.

  • Vistrix #6 3 years ago

    GOG is awesome.

    Ive bought a few games from there and they work just as they should.

    Easy to install, 100% no DRM, 100% compatibility with Vista.

  • Xerx3s #7 3 years ago

    Brilliant. The shittieness of Firefox.

  • robg #8 3 years ago

    Works fine in Firefox.

  • Hunam #9 3 years ago

    I've been using it since the beta started and I've never had a problem.

  • Bitkari #10 3 years ago

    Great stuff!

    (Weird that despite their purposely archaic catalogue GoG is becoming Steam's strongest competitor!)

  • mkreku #11 3 years ago

    Love it when people who know nothing blame their own shortcomings on their browser..

    Anyhow, they have the original GOTHIC on GoG! Go get it!

  • ZuluHero #12 3 years ago

    Awesome. Its been a while since i played BASS (on the amiga).

    time to relive my youth :)

  • Xerx3s #13 3 years ago

    "Love it when people who know nothing blame their own shortcomings on their browser.. "

    I'm a CE and I have roughly 15 years of computer experience in just about every field. I love it when people who know nothing talk bs. Programs are never bugfree and FF is well documented to have numerous unexplainable bugs in it.

    But hey, thx anyway. If I had no manners I would call that post out for what it is.

  • robg #14 3 years ago

    Then point us at your bug report so we can take a look. (No-one's saying it's bug-free; if it's a bug and wasn't just your fault, then we need to get people looking at it.)

  • Gurrah #15 3 years ago

    BASS is for free anyways, coupled with scummvm you don't need GOG, but it's a nice thing for those who don't want to fiddle around with scummvm.

  • Vistrix #16 3 years ago

    @Xerx3s

    Im a CE too but I have 16 years of computer experience.

    Firefox is fine, its just you.

  • Darkedge #17 3 years ago

    Xerx3s: you are MSCE qualified? Well that explains alot ;)

  • Xerx3s #18 3 years ago

    robg: FF dev? No crash or bug report. Made a <a href='http://g4game.eu/gog.png '>screenie</a> but that's about as much effort as I'm going to put into it. Do with it as you please. Works fine in IE6, 7, 8, Op, Saf. It's most likely a char setting of some sort going haywire. Tested it on 2 machines, FF had the same problem on both. Running FF305.

    Vistrix: Yeah oke, whatever mate. Whatever makes you feel good about yourself.

    Darkedge: Yes. Also linux, ccna, etc. What's your point? That kinda stuff is childsplay basics that every person knows about.

  • penhalion #19 3 years ago

    CE?!?

    Criminal Entity?
    Cruddy Eel?
    Crayon Eater?
    Corporate Executive?

    Given how childish and one-up-manship the conversations have been I'm certain it can't possibly be being used to mean Computer Expert. Heck even a layman knows that simply not having the right font installed or selecting the wrong character set can cause the issues some people have mentioned. Meaning there is zero reason to doubt they are indeed having these issues with garbled inputs.

  • Markusdragon #20 3 years ago

    BASS has been free for a long time, but the addition of Lure is nice.

  • LiamK #21 3 years ago

    "Darkedge: Yes. Also linux, ccna, etc. What's your point? That kinda stuff is childsplay basics that every person knows about."

    Heaven knows I have no wish to learn Linux, but calling stuff like that "childsplay that every person knows about" is exactly why people who work in IT don't get invited to parties.

  • Darkedge #22 3 years ago

    @Penhalion: Very very true and anyone working in the computer industry who knows anything considers the MSCE qualifications to be totally worthless and only valued by fools.

    Anyway I had no problems with GoGs website and trusty Firefox 3.0.5 - and this is great news :)

  • stephen #23 3 years ago

    ^^ They'd also know that it is MCSE, not MSCE...

  • mkreku #24 3 years ago

    Love it when people who can't even get Firefox to work on a most basic level pull out their work titles in a futile effort to make themselves look less stupid..

  • Daikon #25 3 years ago

    Since the article is about classic adventure games it should be mentioned that GOG also recently added the first two Simon the Sorceror games to their lineup, each going just for $5.99.

  • kangarootoo #26 3 years ago

    Not one of you involved in this techy conversation has clean hands you know. From the outside looking in, you are all sat in the nerd tree, but just sat on different branches.


    I have to say though, all Xerx3s did was say that Firefox doesn't handle the website very well. Everyone then jumps on him as if their mum works for Mozilla and brings the director home on tuesdays for 'dinner'.

    Firefox DOES have issues with shedloads of websites, and different versions of Firefox on different systems have different issues. Anyone who uses it knows this, so what is the problem with saying it out loud.

    And as for "getting it to work right", its a f*cking web browser. If it doesn't work immediately, right out of the box, with no user setup whatsoever... it is failing as a web browser. You point it at a URL, and it should display the resulting page. That is it. That is what it should do.

    If anyone is more guilty of geeky superiority on here it is those suggesting that the reason a tricial piece of software isn't working is because the user doesn't know how to drive it. It is attitudes like that which hold back development, 'cos people who can be arsed to struggle through with it (and most of the time, it is about being arsed to find out, rather than technical ability) feel more important as a result.

  • Tiger_Walts #27 3 years ago

    They've both been free for a very long time. Lure of the Temptress is a bit tougher to get running so a nice Vista stable version is great.

    And in most cases where a website doesn't work in FF, it's mostly the fault of the website, but not always. But that blame lies with a history of browsers not following the W3C standards as strictly as they should.
    Edited by 1 at 19/12/08 @ 10:32