Amerzone

Amerzone plays like a typical first-person point-and-click adventure game. The player flips between panoramic "screens", which can be panned around to view the game world. Certain elements can be interacted with by clicking on them. To progress in the game, the player must solve puzzles, which may involve talking to people or using items collected throughout the game.

Some items are not required for puzzle-solving, but instead serve to flesh out the game's plot: this is the purpose of the explorer's journal and Valembois's letter. The game has a resource management component in the Hydroflot: the player must constantly be on the lookout for fuel and floppy disks required to keep the vehicle running.

The world of Amerzone interweaves fact and fiction. "Amerzone" itself is the name of a fictional region in South America and the great river that runs through it. The name, and the lush tropical rainforest in the Amerzone, suggest that it is inspired by the real-life Amazon rainforest. Valembois lives in a lighthouse on the fictitious Langrevin peninsula in Brittany.

The game veers further into the realm of fantasy once the player enters Amerzone. The country is home to many strange plants and animals, depicted through watercolor sketches in Valembois's exploration journal. The flora comprises mostly herbaceous plants such as the orchid-like Orcochi. Animals in the Amerzone tend to resemble real-life animals, but with bizarre flourishes: the ventousier resembles a shrew, but its snout branches off into sucker-bearing arms; the rhinopotamus resembles a cross between a rhinoceros and hippopotamus (perhaps it is a horned relative of Toxodon); the giraffe-like web-footed giraffe (perhaps a camelid) navigates the marshlands with its webbed feet.

Before entering the gaming industry, Benoît Sokal drew comic books like Canardo, which he colorized on a personal computer. With the advent of CD-ROMs, which could store hundreds of times more data than then-ubiquitous floppy disks, Sokal was inspired in 1995 to create a multimedia CD-ROM containing 2D and 3D art which would add up to a cohesive universe. His comic publisher, Casterman, approved of the idea, and after a successful demonstration Sokal began work on the project with software developer Gregory Duquesne. Casterman's initial vision was of a cheap, small-scale product with a very limited production run; they eventually realized that such a niche product would not sell, and decided to do something more ambitious.

Sokal and Duquesne began planning a full-fledged video game, which Sokal decided to base on his comic book L'Amerzone. It would be made up of prerendered screens, linked together using the Phoenix VR engine. Sokal held complete creative control over the product, doing all the design work himself. He believed that working alone would foster creativity, whereas collaboration would result in a banal and standard commercial product. He did hire fellow comic book artist Benoît Peeters to assist with writing, but he soon left the project.

Amerzone was a surprise commercial success; GameSpot UK noted in June 1999 that it had become a "big hit in France". Following its release in France in March 1999, it sold 10,000 units by early May, a number that French paper Libération considered a promising sign. The game proceeded to have a long shelf life. Its global sales surpassed 500,000 copies by March 2002.

At the time, Mathieu Van Overstraeten of La Libre Belgique noted that these sales were unusual for Benoît Sokal's work, as each volume of Inspector Canardo averaged 30,000 units sold. In 2007, Michel Bams of Sokal's White Birds Productions reported that Amerzone had risen above 1 million sales. 5 million copies by 2013.