Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Developer Admits Amazing Game Spawned from Boredom
If you have something incredible like the concept of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 kicking about in your brain, it’s kind of your duty to share that with humanity, right? For Game Director, Guillaume Broche, it was a case of leaving a rather comfortable position at Ubisoft and establishing his own company, Sandfall Interactive, to make the dream a reality.
Game of the Year?
Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 released on 25th April 2025 and is currently turning heads with its marvellous storytelling, clean turn-based gameplay, and incredible art and soundtrack. It follows the story of a party that sets out from the city of Lumiere with the end goal of killing the Paintress, a god-like being who wakes once a year to change the glowing number on a magical monolith that stands at the end of the world. When she does, everyone the same age as the new number will decay and disappear.
The game has received consistently positive feedback, rating 92/100 on Metacritic, with more stellar reviews rolling in every day. Within the first three days of the game’s release, it had sold over 1 million copies and is now a solid candidate for Game of the Year. Truly, this is a tale promoting the morale-boosting message that having the bravery to pursue your dreams pays off.
The best part is that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has overturned preconceived notions about modern-day RPGs. The idea was that nobody would want a high-fidelity turn-based experience, and yet the success speaks for itself. Does this mean we’ll see an answering slew of turn-based RPGs produced by the bigwigs? We can only hope. It will be interesting to see what Square Enix, in particular, does with the Final Fantasy 9 remake, which was a return to roots game at its core when it was released initially in 2000.
The Legacy
Allegedly coming up with the idea for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 whilst bored working for Ubisoft during the Pandemic, Broche admits that he did not have enough influence with the higher-ups to pitch his idea. To have a shot, he would have been forced to jump through countless corporate hoops and push his way through the AAA barriers, which is enough to kill enthusiasm for any idea, no matter how great.
Broche had already held multiple high-level positions across the gaming industry, working for both Ubisoft and X Box. He had the experience, so instead of taking the traditional route and descending into bureaucratic Hell, he decided to break all convention and take to Reddit. Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, the lead writer for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, was discovered through a demo she submitted for a voice acting plea she found from Broche.
I was like: ‘I’ve never done that, it sounds kinda cool’, so I sent him an audition.
Originally cast as one of the major characters in an early rendition of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Jennifer later switched to lead writer, though she said that with a team as small as theirs, they ‘all wore different hats’.
Do What You Love
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is such an uplifting achievement within the RPG world, not only because it is a wonderful piece of art and a joy to play, but because of what its development could mean for the industry as a whole. Guillaume Broche took the plunge, rather than running a soul-crushing rat race for a further few decades while the idea stewed, and established his own company to tell this story.
Broche pulled in new creators through unconventional methods to create a real passion project that shines with innovation, and maybe this is enough of a message to anyone who wants to create, be they AAA developers or little indie newbies alone in their room. Do what you love, at all costs. You never know, perhaps your project, too, will sell 1 million copies in three days and be cited as a candidate for Game of the Year.
