Amerzone: The Explorer's Legacy

## System requirements

* **OS:** Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8
* **Processor:** 233 MHz
* **Memory:** 64 MB RAM
* **Video Card:** DirectX compatible Video Card
* **Hard Disk Space:** 100 MB
* **Sound:** DirectX compatible Sound Card

**Amerzone: The Explorer's Legacy** is a first-person fantasy graphic adventure game published by Microïds and designed by the Belgian comic artist Benoît Sokal, who based it on his 1986 *Inspector Canardo* comic strip *L'Amerzone*. Although it is a separate game it is set in the same world as the Syberia series.

Like the comic, the game tells the story of a French explorer, Alexandre Valembois, who goes on an expedition to the mysterious South American country of Amerzone. There, he discovers many fantastical animals including a species of magical White Birds, who require human intervention for their survival. These become threatened when a friend of Valembois turns Amerzone into a brutal dictatorship, and Valembois endeavors to rescue the endangered species. The game adds a journalist as the player character, who continues Valembois's quest as the man nears death.

*Amerzone* received generally positive reception. It was praised for its atmosphere and visuals, with critics claiming that it lent it a poetic and dreamlike quality; while criticism targeted the sound, controls, and difficulty. It was a great commercial success, with over 1 million copies sold in its original release. The game's setting became the foundation of Sokal's *Syberia* series, and is the namesake for the video game development company he co-founded White Birds Productions.

## Plot

### Before the game (1932–1934: the Valembois expedition)

Alexandre Valembois, a zoology buff fascinated by Amerzone, lobbies the National Museum of Natural History in Paris to fund an expedition to discover the exotic flora and fauna mentioned by Antonio Alvarez. The Museum grants his wish in 1932, and he devises a watercraft called a Hydraflot to get to and around the country. Valembois, Alvarez, and the Jesuit David Mackowski set out on October 22 of that year, finding their way by following the migrating Amerzone geese. On the way, the Hydraflot is damaged by a sperm whale, so they make the rest of the trip on a Peruvian whaling vessel.

They set foot in Amerzone on Christmas Day, and make their way to the former trading post of Puebla. Valembois begins sketching and studying the wildlife. On New Year's Day, he learns of the White Birds from one Luis Angel, and decides to pursue the lead despite widespread disbelief in the creatures. He hires Angel as a guide and rows up the Amerzone River, going it alone after Angel abandons him on February 18. On the 22nd of the month, he discovers a native tribe the Ovo-vohalos but hesitates to make contact. That night, he contracts a debilitating illness, and is nursed back to health by the comely native girl Yekoumani. They grow very close, and upon his recovery a month later, begins designing labor-saving machines for the tribe.

On June 1, a young tribesman returns from the nearby mountains with a large White Bird egg, thus convincing Valembois of their existence. He takes part in the ceremony to cure the egg so it will hatch as healthy White Bird. Promising to Yekoumani that he will return, he heads for the mountains the next day. Making his way through a swamp and an ancient temple, he reaches the Birds' volcanic home on the 18th. In his zeal for scientific recognition, he steals an egg and returns to Puebla, thus betraying Yekoumani and the tribe.

In France, however, the scientific community dismiss the find as a hoax, perhaps an oversized ostrich egg. The Museum fires him for bringing ridicule upon them, and after a stint as a *lycée* professor, he holes up in a lighthouse in Brittany, all the while longing for Yekoumani and wallowing in guilt over his betrayal. Meanwhile, Alvarez has seized power in Amerzone and turned the country into a despotic dictatorship. His ties to the Museum now severed, Valembois independently builds a new Hydraflot with which he wants to return to Amerzone with the egg, but comes to realize that he is too old and weak for the journey.

### Game starts (1998: the journalist)

In 1998, the player character - a journalist - is assigned to interview Valembois. The old man confesses that he is dying, and beseeches the journalist to travel to Amerzone with the egg and safeguard the White Birds. He entrusts him with a letter and his old expedition journal, and the newsman sets out in the new and upgraded Hydraflot. The vehicle now uses programs installed on different floppy disks to switch between different configurations. It is also equipped with a grappling hook.

The journalist sets sail, and stops to refuel at the same island where Valembois ran into the sperm whale. An ultrasonic repellent keeps the craft safe, but a disoriented whale ends up tangled in a fishing net. The journalist manages to free it, and finds a disk that turns the Hydraflot into a helicopter. After fueling up, he heads for Puebla. In the once-lively, now heavily militarized village, he encounters an aged Mackowski who tells him that a despondent Yekoumani committed suicide in 1935. Mackowski wishes to aid the journalist in his quest, but Alvarez has him assassinated and the journalist captured to cover up the existence of the Birds. The journalist manages to escape, fuels up and locates a disk which lets him go up the Amerzone river.

On his way upstream, he discovers the plants and animals mentioned in Valembois's journal. A collision with a three-horned buffalo damages the Hydraflot so badly that only the grappling hook is left functioning, and the journalist must pull himself from rock to rock until he reaches the Ovo-volaho village. He narrowly escapes death when the hook catches on an ill-tempered rhinopotamus. At the village, he has the egg cured, acquires a new disk and rides one of Valembois's contraptions to get above some waterfalls that are in the way.

He thus reaches the swamp, but not before the Hydraflot is knocked over and finally put out of commission. The egg thus becomes lost in the mazelike swamp. The journalist finds a whistle in a pile dwelling, which lets him call and ride a web-footed giraffe deeper into the swamp. After finding the egg, he climbs a great tree and crosses a rope bridge into the temple Valembois had written of. There, he encounters Alvarez, who threatens to kill him but doesn't have the strength left for it. Further on, he rides a primitive hang glider which takes him to the volcano's rim. He sets the egg down and it hatches the White Birds, thus accomplishing Valembois's dying wish.

## Development

### Production

The team began producing artwork in 1996, using LightWave 3D for character and object models, and Bryce 3D for environments. Modeling characters at Sokal's desired quality level was time-consuming, so the cast of characters was kept small. Being unfamiliar with 3D graphics, Sokal had to learn on the fly by studying the software documentation.

Sokal eventually realized the project was too ambitious for the two-man team, and hired Supinfocom graduates to help with the graphics from 1996 onwards. In 1998, Duquesne left to pursue a career at LightWave in the United States, and Sokal called on the Belgian company Grid Animation to produce cutscenes and do further graphics work. The experience made Sokal overcome his misgivings about working collaboratively. In an interview with JATV, he was quoted as saying: "I recall that [for] the first chapters of *Amerzone*, I modeled everything because I wanted to be on top, but it was impossible of course. So little by little, people made their way into the team and started modeling, and I told myself it made me sick but... in a way it was a revolution in my mind!" He ended up highly satisfied with the output of his collaborators.

Sokal recalls that the game's development was troubled at many points. In 1997, Casterman had fallen on hard times and called upon the publisher Microfolie's to help with financing. Microfolie themselves went bankrupt and the project was "saved" when Microïds bought them out and agreed to fund the game. The total budget was 5 million francs (€760,000), much higher than Sokal's initial sub-million-franc estimate. He would go on to describe the game's completion as a "miracle".

*Amerzone* underwent several changes in direction as some design ideas proved impractical or unappealing. Sokal originally wanted a strictly 2D art style, but was disappointed in the results. The team considered using live actors keyed into computer backgrounds instead of time-consuming 3D character modeling, but found the compositing of real and fake elements jarring. Concurrently, Duquesne and the publishers pushed for a highly interactive product, whereas Sokal had initially conceived of the game as a more passive experience. A day-to-night progression was scrapped, as was a requirement to feed and hydrate the journalist, since this would have created frustrating failure states.

### Release

*Amerzone* was released in France on 4 CD-ROMs for Windows on March 18, 1999. Mac OS and PlayStation ports followed in September and December of that year. December also saw the DVD-ROM rerelease of the game, in which the cutscenes were in MPEG2 format instead of Smacker video. The DVD-ROM version saw further rereleases, some of them by Mindscape, some of them as bargain-priced pack-ins with other adventure titles.

On January 29, 2014, the Android port of the game was released. It is identical to the iOS release.

## Languages

Amerzone supports 5 languages:

* English
* German
* French
* Spanish
* Italian

## Additional material

* **L'Amerzone** *-* Benoit's comic that served as an inspiration for the development of the game (it is not set in the same Universe as the series).
* **L'Amerzone: Stratégies et secrets** (eng. Amerzone: Strategies & Secrets) - The official strategy guide. In addition to a walkthrough of the game, it contains a guide to the *Amerzone* universe, an interview with Sokal and some behind-the-scenes information.
* **Amerzone. Souvenirs d'une expédition** (eng. Amerzone. Memories of an expedition) - A book that compiles the art from the game and also some concept art that didn't make it into the final product. It is annotated with text explanations of the images, most of which are from the in-game expedition journal.

## Official sites

* Microids - Syberia
* Microids on Discord