Amerzone (by Microids) was created by Benoit Sokal, a Belgian comic book writer who moved into the world of video game design. Created in 1999, Amerzone is Sokal’s first game; in many ways it seems more of a repository and showcase for Sokals imagery than a video game.
While SIMS and others are categorically environmental sustainability focussed video games, Amerzone falls in the category of adventure or quest game – a mystery is offered at the start and the rest of the game involves solving it. Nature and the natural environment are the central focus of the game, however ecological, environmental, and sustainability concerns arise implicitly rather than explicitly.
From the start, with the introduction of the dying wish of the explorer scientist and his specimens and notebooks – gorgeously rendered by Sokal. Certainly the images bring to mind drawings made by explorer scientists from previous centuries, such as Darwin and Audibon.
(Benoit Sokal image, copyright 1999 Microids)
With the allusion to early explorer scientists comes both the promise and potential of new findings, yet (looking back from our 21st century perspective) the knowledge of the devastation this type of exploration often brought and continues to bring. This indeed is the theme of the video game, and the quest of the player is to fulfill the explorer scientist’s dying wish to try to – at least in part – undo an ecological wrong he did.
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