Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 head was "bored" at Ubisoft and hungry for a JRPG, and made the highest-rated game of 2025 – "Somehow it worked, which still makes no sense to me"

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"We have, I think, an amazing team mostly of junior people," Guillaume Broche said

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 combat
(Image credit: Sandfall Interactive)

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche was previously a brand development manager and narrative lead at Ubisoft, but left to found Sandfall Interactive in 2020 when he found himself "bored" and "wanting to do something different," as he told BBC.

Broche had a hankering for an RPG shaped, as co-founder François Meurisse told us earlier this year, by a "heritage of JRPGs" like Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, and 10. For its reactive turn-based combat system, the team also stood on the shoulders of games like Sekiro, with other systemic bits from deckbuilders added in for texture.

Clair Obscur sold over 1 million copies in three days – a good launch for almost any game short of GTA 6, and especially so for a new, relatively small studio.

There can be some unfairness in the narrative that all you have to do to make the game of the year is leave Ubisoft – Assassin's Creed Shadows is notably good and doing pretty well – but there's also no denying that AAA factories like Ubisoft aren't known for putting out wild, experimental games like Clair Obscur.

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.

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