How was the “Game of the Year” made

In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic of Kovid, Guillaume Broch was like millions of others around the world.

“Bored in their work and want to do something different.”

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

This will become Clair Rescurr: Expedition 33, which has become a sensation five years later.

He sold one million copies in just three days, headed Spotify Viral Charts with his soundtrack and even won praise from French President Emmanuel MacronS

But one of the most notable things about him is the story of how it was done – a story of random messages by Reddit, “Massive Luck” and an unusual approach to the development of the game.

The 33 expedition is placed in Lumiere, a fictional world overshadowed by a huge monolith, bearing a glowing figure on his face.

Each year, an entity appears known as the lover and reduces the number of one, which causes everyone of this age to disappear, and the game follows a group in an effort to destroy the mysterious being.

This is an intriguing setting for an epic tale, but the aesthetics of the game inspired by France from the 19th century, and its battles based on the old school also separate it.

But conventional wisdom, when Guillaume began, was that the players did not want anything like that.

So, five years ago, he began to recruit people for his passionate project, firing reports on Reddit and online forums of potential colleagues.

One of those who replied was Jennifer Sundayberg-Jen, who was blocked in Australia at the time.

“I saw a Guillaume Reddit post asking for voice actors to record something free of charge for a demonstration,” she says.

“I was like,” I never did this, it sounds somehow cool, “so I sent him a listening.”

Jennifer was originally played as the main character in an early version of the game, but eventually changed the roles to become a leading team writer.

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

Following funding from Kepler Interactive, the main team has grown to about 30 people.

Many of them were found in a similar, unusual way for Jennifer.

Composer Lorien Testard – who has never worked on a video game – has been discovered through publications on the SoundCloud music website.

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

Guillaume is more fiercely attributed to its success to Covid – people looking for a creative exit – as well as “massive luck”.

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

“I have a list of 15 people to contact and I am like,” Okay, I will probably get no one at all. “

“And every time the first is like,” Yes, let’s do it. “

But Guillaume admits that he was heading for people who seemed to be “in accordance 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. We watched the same things. The discussion was so liquid.”

Expedition 33 was also widely praised for its production values ​​- competing with those of the games processed by hundreds, even thousands of staff.

Guillaume attributes part of the latest achievements in the tools used to perform games, which allowed the team to work more efficiently.

The presence of Kepler’s support allowed the studio to attract actors, including Charlie Cox to Daredevil, the star of “The Lord of the Rings” Andy Surkis, and video game actors Jennifer English and Ben Star.

And while Sandfall called an additional contribution from studios, musicians and other specialists, Jennifer and Guillaume say that the main team ultimately “wears many different hats”.

“And so we all come in and do different parts, things that may be out of our traditional role,” says Jennifer, who also guides the game of play in different languages.

“We have, in my opinion, an incredible team mostly by junior people, but they are so incredibly invested in the project and talented,” says Guillaume.

“Somehow it works, which still doesn’t make sense to me after all these years.”

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