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. Later development Anuman interactive started work on iOS ports of the game in November 2010. A release date in April 2011 was announced on February 25 of that year, and the game was ultimately released on June 7, 2011. Tetraedge Games—a developer of adventure games for mobile devices—was chosen to make the port, since they shared office space with Anuman and so could intercommunicate efficiently. Tetraedge cofounder Emmanuel Zaza said that the greatest hurdle lay in parsing all the old development data, which had not been organized properly. The port features greatly improved in-game visuals and cutscene video quality, and a new playable area: the top of the lighthouse. Benoît Sokal was eager to see the game rereleased for new players to enjoy, and collaborated with the Tetraedge team. 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