Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s director was bored, so he created 2025’s highest-rated game. Read on to learn more about what pushed the developers to build the game and how Sandfall Interactive was formed.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Was Made Out of Boredom
Doing Something Different
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is no doubt an instant classic, with how it became the highest rated game of 2025 and selling over 1 million copies in 3 days. Surprisingly, the game-of-the-year favorite was born out of boredom and the desire to do something different.
BBC News spoke with the developers from Sandfall Interactive on May 4 about how the game came to be. Director Guillaume Broche revealed that the project started as something to cure his boredom. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, he was working with Ubisoft but felt restless and had an idea for a game.
Since childhood, Broche liked the popular JRPG video game series Final Fantasy and wanted to create something similar. Thus, his quest to fulfill his dream began, starting off with Reddit.
A Stroke of Luck
To begin his vision, Broche sent out random messages on Reddit and online forums to form his team. At the time, the concept of Expedition 33 as a Belle Époque-inspired classic turn-based gameplay was not something people raved about. However, this did not stop Broche, and he continued to send out feelers for his passion project.
Being under lockdown in Australia at the time, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen was one of the individuals who replied. She saw a post on Reddit with Broche asking for voice actors and decided to try it out. "I was like: 'I've never done that, it sounds kinda cool', so I sent him an audition," Svedberg-Yen said. At first, she was cast to voice as one of the game’s original major characters, but then became Expedition 33’s lead writer.
Broche eventually left Ubisoft and shifted his focus fully to Expedition 33, forming Sandfall Interactive. Once publisher Kepler Interactive provided funding, the core team expanded to roughly 30 members. Most of them were also discovered in unconventional ways, as with composer Lorien Testard, who connected with them through posts on Soundcloud.
With Kepler Interactive’s support, they were able to reach out to well-known actors such as Charlie Cox (Daredevil). Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI), Jennifer English (Baldur’s Gate 3), Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings), and more.
Despite the growing team, Broche and Svedberg-Yen said they "wore many different hats" during the game’s production. Many of the core team had to work outside of their role to build the game, as Svedberg-Yen was also responsible for translations in different languages. Broche said, "We have, I think, an amazing team mostly of junior people but they are so incredibly invested in the project and talented."
Expedition 33’s origins seem to be as magical as the game itself. With boredom and luck by their side, Sandfall Interactive produced a generational game that will be played for years to come. Clair Obscur: Expedition is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. To stay up to date with the latest information about the game, click on our article below!
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Clair Obscur: How a passion project became 2025's most talked-about game
