COLUMNAE: A Past Under Construction is a nonlinear point & click adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world. The story of COLUMNAE is set more than a century after an environmental catastrophe made the air on the surface of the earth unbreathable, and the rich locked themselves up in Deus: a closed heavenly settlement built upon gigantic metal pillars called Columnae. Beneath Columnae, a huge apparatus Machina was built to automatically extract underground resources and pump them up via pipes, through Columnae and into Deus. Trying to escape the lethal environment on the surface, those not wealthy enough settled in Columnae, where they now live by parasitizing on resources coming from Machina. Not only unable to enter Deus, but also unwilling to cooperate with people living on nearby Cliffs, the society of Columnae is plagued by corruption, political manipulation, power struggle and poverty.