The game design team first established the rules of the gameplay, and the size and abilities of the characters to move and jump around, including what light sources would reflect on them, plus the impact of the puzzles, and then rigorously based the measurements of each room on them. After the illustrators had determined the decoration and lighting ambiance of the rooms, 3D graphic designers modeled each of them in polygons. Finally, "bitmappers", as the Cryo company called them, applied textured surfaces to the walls and objects [Source: official French Cryo Interactive site].
The recently founded company Eko Software created an innovative 3D game engine especially for this game. It featured unified lighting and shadowing, that is real-time rendering of detailed shadow and light effects for the whole environment, including realistic reflections on moving characters and objects. Previously, environments were usually pre-rendered and stored, because of limited computer processing power and memory capacity. Fully interactive 3D motion effects were also applied to fluids like water and lava in this game for the first time [Source: official French Cryo Interactive and Eko Software sites].
The game won the Megastar award from the authoritative French PC game magazine Joystick, with a score of 90% for technical quality, 88% for design, and 88% for value ("intérêt" in French) [Source: official Eko Software site].
Comic book artist Régis Loisel designed the main character Gift for the game and most of the other ones. Gift resembles the strange little creature Le Fourreux (Furry) from his album series "La Quête de l'oiseau du temps" (The Quest for the Time-Bird) [Source: French Joystick magazine].