Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has earned effusive praise from all corners of the entertainment world, even drawing some kind words from French president Emmanuel Macron. Of course, most of this can be attributed to the game’s stunning art direction, incredible, diverse soundtrack, captivating turn-based combat, and twist-laden narrative, but the context of Clair Obscur’s development is also an important part of its legacy. Indeed, 2025’s Game of the Year winner came from famously humble beginnings, and was the result of a lot of passion, gumption, and no shortage of luck.
Something I find emblematic of Clair Obscur’s broader development story is how Sandfall Interactive found most of its startling talent. There’s the famous story about how the studio discovered previously unknown composer Lorien Testard via Soundcloud, an unlikely and unconventional hiring process that wound up leading to one of the greatest video game soundtracks in recent memory, but the way the studio landed now-award-winning writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen is rather similar. Like Testard, she had virtually no professional experience in the field she would wind up excelling in, although her path to Lead Writer at Sandfall is perhaps even more extraordinary.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Studio Sandfall Interactive Remains Secretive About Franchise’s Future
Sandfall Interactive lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen says she can’t offer any details on the potential for a Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sequel.
Clair Obscur’s Lead Writer Had No Professional Writing Experience
Unlike Testard, who has expressed a lifelong love for gaming that informed his work on the Clair Obscur soundtrack, Svedberg-Yen did not grow up playing video games. She describes herself as an avid reader and TV buff, counting shows like Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer among her favorites. This lifelong love of storytelling did not translate immediately into a career as a writer; however, Svedberg-Yen emerged into the world of finance after graduating from The Wharton School in 2004. She would continue her education at Harvard, where she studied International Development.
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Svedberg-Yen would go on to work in private equity for several years, quitting in the mid-2010s. But she still didn’t start working as a writer. She describes her love for storytelling as being somewhat hypothetical and non-specific for most of her life, telling IGN, “I didn’t really write, write. I would always like being creative, but…writing, it always felt like the really brilliant people write.” A post on the RecordThisForFree subreddit in 2020 would lead to a fundamental change in her thinking, it appears.
The Reddit Post That Turned Jennifer Svedberg-Yen into a Pro Writer
RecordThisForFree is a subreddit dedicated to precisely what it says on the tin: if you’re working on a video game, animated film, or anything else that requires voice work, you can post casting calls to the subreddit and land free voice talent. Svedberg-Yen, bored one day while in COVID lockdown, was browsing this subreddit when she came upon the following post:
On a whim, Svedberg-Yen reached out to Guillame and was cast as two characters in the “ambitious AA game” described in the post. At this time, it was called We Lost and had little to do with the Clair Obscur gamers would come to know and love. For instance, it was more inspired by Victorian England than the Belle Epoque era, and steampunk was a major influence as well. While talking with Broche about her characters, Svedberg-Yen offered to help “jazz up” the dialogue a bit, since she is a native English speaker, whereas most of Sandfall, at that time, were French speakers. From there, she says, their collaboration snowballed, and she began working as a part-time writer on the game.
As time went on, Broche started to drift away from the We Lost premise and eventually chose to scrap the project entirely and start from scratch. According to Svedberg-Yen, Broche was struck by inspiration upon seeing a painting of a “fawn-like creature,” which led him to the idea of the monolith, Paintress, and the gommage, but not much else. Svedberg-Yen wrote an actual story and world around these concepts, putting her firmly in the Lead Writer position.
While Svedberg-Yen was the Lead Writer, and Clair Obscur is in many ways “her” story, she wasn’t the only one to work on the game in this capacity. Guillaume Broche co-wrote the main campaign and script, and quest designer Victor Deleard worked on the scripts for the side quests.
Svedberg-Yen describes her writing process as very intuitive and personal, rather than academic or cerebral. For instance, when writing Sciel, Svedberg-Yen says she drew from her own experiences with her husband, while Maelle is partially inspired by her own teenage years. This is to say, her contributions to the world of Clair Obscur are inestimably significant, and her lack of experience may have actually helped the game—audiences certainly seem to love Svedberg-Yen’s personally inspired characters.
And so, in her late-30s, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen penned her first-ever video game, and it probably won’t be her last. She’s reportedly gotten quite into games herself since working on Clair Obscur, boasting about impressive feats like platinuming Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok, so perhaps her love affair with the medium is just getting started. And with Sandfall Interactive teasing more Clair Obscur projects in the future, we might get a Svedberg-Yen encore before too long.
- Released
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April 24, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Sandfall Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Kepler Interactive
