Revolution Software

Revolution Software Ltd. is a British adventure game company, based in York in north east England.

The company was founded in 1990 by Charles Cecil, Tony Warriner, David Sykes and Noirin Carmody, with a view to create the company's first game, Lure of the Temptress.

Company history

Released in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST, and PC, Lure of the Temptress was a reasonable success and set the company up for their future successes. Still fondly remembered today, Revolution made the game Freeware on the 1st of April 2003.

Their next game really created the companies reputation for high quality adventure games. Released in 1994, Beneath a Steel Sky became a major hit on the Amiga and PC. The game focused on protagonist Robert Foster's abduction and subsequent search for answers in a dystopian city of the future. Despite the game's cyberpunk/dark science fiction setting and theme, it was in fact a comedy game. The understated british humour of the company has become something of a hall mark.

Despite the success of B.A.S.S., it was Revolution's next game that they would become most well known for, and which would have both the biggest critical and commercial success. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars was released for PC and PlayStation in 1996 and became a major hit in europe.

The game revolved around the story of George Stobbart, an american tourist whose autumn holiday in Paris is rudely inturrupted by a bomb planted by a clown. Investigating the bombing, he runs into photo journalist Nicole Collard, and the two embark on a globe trotting adventure of epic proportions.

The high quality hand drawn graphics, stong story and characters, and quality gameplay helped make the game a major hit, and cemented the company's reputation for story driven games.

The game was quickly followed by an excellent and well received (though perhaps slightly rushed) sequel, Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror. Although the game was a commercial success, the market for adventure games was apparently shrinking, so the game appeared to move away from the genre towards more action orientated games (though with strong story driven elements and adventure liked gameplay).

Sony asked the company to make a new game for them, after the commercial success of Broken Sword on their PlayStation console. While working on this game, In Cold Blood, the company also developed a children's adventure to coincide with the release of the film The Road to El Dorado in 2000.

In Cold Blood was released in March 2003 for the PC and PlayStation. Set in the near future, the game focused on John Cord, an MI6 agent. Sent to the (fictional) former societ region of Volgia, the player embarks on a mission to investigate a newly discovered substance, Blue Nephrine. However, Cord is betrayed and must work out by whom, while also trying to work out what plans the dictator of Volgia, General Nagarov, has for this mysterious new chemical and the implications for the world.

While the game was generally well received, it was not as big a commercial success as expected. While the graphics were very high quality, the competition to make high quality 3D games had intensified by 2001 and on release the game looked a little dated. The gameplay was also well received, though some believe it may have alienated some of the fans of the company's previous games, while at the same time was not challenging enough for the mass action market.

After this, the company embarked on Good Cop Bad Cop, a 3D action game for the "next generation consoles" (at this time, that was the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube). However the game was eventually cancelled so that the company could concentrate on a new project, Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon.

Released in november 2003, the game featured high quality 3D graphics, and moved away from the 2D "point and click" style of older games. As the game was developed for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox simultaneously, they decided to move to a direct control mechanism (direct keyboard control of the protagonist, instead of mouse control clicking on hot spots, as this was easier to convert to the consoles game pads).

Overall the game was moderately well received by fans but was not as successful as earlier games in the series. There were some complaints that the gameplay was uninspired, with a lot of "crate pushing" puzzles. However the top notch voice acting, good story and state of the art graphics were all highly praised.

After the release of Broken Sword 3, the company decided to downsize, with elements of future projects to be outsourced. Charles Cecil, the managing director, explained that it was no longer viable for a small scale developer to do everything in house anymore, with costs being lower by hiring other companies for short periods.

Company boss Charles Cecil has said in 2004 "Beneath A Steel Sky 2 is a project Revolution has been considering for a while, and has started to move forward on, but we are unable to comment beyond this." On 4th March 2004 Revolution purchased the URL http://www.steel-sky2.com, it is speculated that the game is well into the early stages of development.

It is predicted the game if released will be in 3D like Revolution Softwares latest release Broken Sword - The Sleeping Dragon.

Games

• Lure of the Temptress (1992)
• Beneath a Steel Sky (1994)
• Broken Sword (1996)
• Broken Sword 2 (1997)
• The Road to El Dorado (2000)
• In Cold Blood (2001)
• Broken Sword 3 (2003)

External links

• Revolution Software Ltd (http://www.revolution.co.uk/)
• Revolution Software Ltd (http://www.revgames.com/) - alternative link
• Revfans (http://www.revfans.com/) - Revolution Software Fansite