How the ‘Game of the Year’ was made

In 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic, Guillaume Broche was like millions of others around the world.

“Bored in their job and wanting to do something different.”

Working for French gaming giant Ubisoft at the time, he had an idea for his own project – a role-playing game inspired by one of his childhood favourites, the classic Japanese series Final Fantasy.

That would become Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 which, five years later, has become a sensation.

It sold one million copies in just three days, topped Spotify viral charts with its soundtrack, and even won praise from French President Emmanuel Macron.

But one of the most remarkable things about it is the story of how it was made – a tale of random Reddit messages, “massive luck” and an unusual approach to game development.

Expedition 33 is set in Lumiere, a fictional world overshadowed by a huge monolith bearing a glowing numeral on its face.

Each year an entity known as The Paintress emerges and lowers the number by one, causing everyone of that age to vanish, and the game follows a group on a quest to destroy the mysterious being.

It’s an intriguing set-up for an epic tale, but the game’s aesthetic, inspired by 19th-Century France, and its old-school turn-based battles also set it apart.

But the conventional wisdom when Guillaume began was that players didn’t want something like that.

So, five years ago, he started to recruit people for his passion project, firing out messages on Reddit and online forums to potential colleagues.

One of those who responded was Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, who was under lockdown in Australia at the time.

“I saw a post on Reddit by Guillaume asking for voice actors to record something for free for a demo,” she says.

“I was like: ‘I’ve never done that, it sounds kinda cool’, so I sent him an audition.”

Jennifer was originally cast as a major character in an early version of the game, but eventually switched roles to become the team’s lead writer.

Guillaume eventually left Ubisoft and formed Sandfall Interactive to work on Clair Obscur full-time from its base in Montpellier, France.

After securing funding from publisher Kepler Interactive, the core team grew to about 30 people.

Many of them were found in a similar, unusual manner to Jennifer.

Composer Lorien Testard – who had never worked on a video game before – was discovered via posts on music-sharing website Soundcloud.

“I call this the Guillaume effect. He’s very good at finding really cool people,” says Jennifer.

Guillaume more modestly attributes his success rate to Covid – people looking for a creative outlet – and also “massive luck”.

“It’s always the same story,” he says.

“I have a list of 15 people to contact and I’m like: ‘Okay I’m probably going to get maybe no one at all’.

“And every time the first one is like: ‘Yeah, let’s do it’.”

But Guillaume does admit that he targeted people who seemed to be “in line with the direction” he wanted to take the project.

“Lorien, when we discussed the game for the first time, we had exactly the same references,” he says.

“We loved the same thing. We watched the same things. The discussion was so fluid.”

Expedition 33 has also been widely praised for its production values – rivalling those of games worked on by hundreds, even thousands of staff.

Guillaume attributes some of this to recent advances in tools used to make games, which allowed the team to work more efficiently.

Having the backing of Kepler allowed the studio to attract actors including Daredevil’s Charlie Cox, Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis, and video game actors Jennifer English and Ben Starr.

And while Sandfall did call on extra input from support studios, musicians and other specialists, Jennifer and Guillaume say the core team ended up “wearing a lot of different hats”.

“And so we all pitch in and do different parts, things that may be outside of our traditional role,” says Jennifer, who was also in charge of translating the game into different languages.

“We have, I think, an amazing team mostly of junior people but they are so incredibly invested in the project and talented,” says Guillaume.

“Somehow it worked, which still makes no sense to me after all these years.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.