Syberia – Eyes on the Game #7

Today we’re going to take a look back at the classic adventure game from Microids that was released in 2002. The original Syberia features the adventures of lawyer Kate Walker and her journey across Europe and Asia to find Hans Voralberg, a mysterious automaton inventor.

Did you know?

· The game was directed, written, and designed by Belgian comic book artist Benoît Sokal, who sadly passed away in May 2021. Among his most notable works was the Inspector Canardo comic series that featured an anthropomorphic duck detective.· The story of Syberia is set in the same universe as Amerzone: The Explorer's Legacy, another adventure game from B. Sokal (you can find a few references to it here and there).· Originally the script for Syberia was much longer, but the creators have decided to divide the stories into smaller pieces you can experience in Syberia II and Syberia 3 games.· The game performed very well in sales – by 2017, when Syberia 3 was released, the original had sold over 3 million copies worldwide. It was named the best computer adventure game of 2002 by PC Gamer US, Computer Gaming World, GameSpot, and GameSpy.

The game’s development

Syberia was produced entirely in Montreal by 35 people under the direction of Benoît Sokal on a budget of €2 million. You can see some of the game’s creative process here.