Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 composer Lorien Testard on scoring 2025's highest-rated RPG

Following five years of hard composition work, we speak to the person responsible for creating the beautiful and emotional soundtrack for 2025’s must-play RPG.

In our official for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, we called it ‘a brilliantly modern turn-based in all but name’. But for as much as this classification references a fun combat system, an interesting party of heroes, and an intriguing world, that feeling of classic RPGs is also bolstered by an unbelievably ambitious score that is equal parts beautiful and dramatic. From the emotional swellings heard when exploring one of the game’s many attractive hubs to the moreish themes heard during the throes of a dramatic boss battle, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s soundtrack stands toe-to-toe with the greats – and may well end up being one of 2025’s most memorable.

Such a feat is made even more impressive when you consider that the composer, Lorien Testard, hadn’t ever worked on a game before, and was discovered by game director Guillaume Broche through his work on SoundCloud. Fast forward five years later, and the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack has since enjoyed a staggering 1.5 million streams, mimicking the worldwide success of the game itself. People can’t get enough of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in all its aspects.

To learn more about how Lorien Testard approached scoring one of the year’s most ambitious (and unexpectedly successful) turn-based RPGs, we sat down with the composer to talk about the projects early beginnings and its most difficult challenges.

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This being the first video game you’ve composed the soundtrack for, how did you come to be involved with Sandfall Interactive?

I joined Guillaume Broche right at the beginning of the project. He came across my SoundCloud page, where I was uploading original compositions every week, exploring the styles of different video games. He loved what he heard and got in touch with me by email to offer me the role of composer for the game he was developing at the time, which was called We Lost. We immediately shared a very close and similar sensitivity about what we imagined for our dream game, that’s how I started working on the soundtrack for what would later become Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Clair Obscur is a big game with a lot of different environments and themes. How would you describe the overall soundscape and was it a challenge to try and capture?

It’s difficult for me to describe the overall music of Expedition 33, it’s made up of different ideas and musical styles, depending on what I felt for each environment or characters. I wanted to create a soundtrack that would immerse the player and make them feel like they were part of a moving world that’s live around them. That intention with the size of the world was the most challenging part for me. I spent a lot of time thinking about the place and role of each song within the game.

Did you know early on that, more so than most other games, the musical score would be with the player 95% of the game, and did this impact your approach?

I was lucky to have access to the concept art and the game’s script very early on, which gave me a good sense of the project’s scope. I put together a list of all the pieces of music I imagined to tell the story and follow the adventure of Expedition 33. There were a few changes along the way, with some levels being cut or parts of the script evolving, but overall, I kept following the needs and the vision I had imagined for the world of Clair Obscur.

How did the game’s Belle Époque art style and presentation influence the score, if at all?

The Belle Époque aesthetic is very strongly present in the art and concepts of the game. Combined with the story and the characters, it gave me an overall feeling of the atmosphere that I tried to capture through the music. I’ve also listened to French music throughout my life, so it’s naturally become part of my musical sensitivity and the way I hear and compose music today. And I had a lot of fun adding a few little nods here and there to instruments that people often associate with France — like the accordion in the theme for the Mimes and the Pétank.

What was the process of recording the score like? Was it ever a possibility that you wouldn’t get to record it live using real musicians?

Yes, it was only later in the production that we had the incredible chance to work with musicians and record the music of Expedition 33 with live instruments. At the beginning of the project, I started creating the soundtrack on my own, and then I was blessed to work with Alice Duport-Percier. I had always dreamed of recording the songs with live musicians, and as the production moved forward, I finally had the chance to make that happen. I am deeply grateful to all the musicians who recorded with us for the soundtrack. They gave so much— they put a part of their soul and their heart into the soundtrack. It would never have been the same without them.

Can you tell us about how the specific collaborations with Ben Starr and Victor Barba came to be?

In both cases, the connection happened through the song I had imagined their voices for. For Victor Borba, I composed Une Vie à Peindre with a confrontation between two characters in mind. Alice embodied one of them, and the song was calling for a powerful male voice to bring contrast and intensity. When Victor screams, I can feel all the love and anger needed to carry the energy of the lyrics, and the contrast between his voice and Alice’s was exactly what I was looking for to bring that confrontation to life.

For Ben Starr, I wrote the lyrics to Until Next Life while thinking about Verso. I imagined the character singing that song. So when I met Ben last Christmas, I asked him if he would like to sing on it, he accepted and took on the challenge brilliantly. I was really impressed by his instinct with the song. I love this version of the song, and I’m grateful that he brings Verso’s voice through the song.

154 is a lot of tracks for a single game. When did it become apparent that the soundtrack for Clair Obscur would be this gargantuan, and why did it require this approach?

I wasn’t really keeping track of how many songs I was writing; it was by composing songs daily that the number gradually grew. In the end, I actually composed far more than the 154 tracks, but we made selections along the way to make sure each song found its natural place. It was the world of Clair Obscur and the desire to paint every musical colour that guided the creation of the soundtrack.

Finally, what’s one aspect of the Clair Obscur score you hope surprises people when they hear it? What’s something you hope they take away?

I love so much that each player experiences the soundtrack in their own way. It’s an incredible feeling to know that players can love and be moved by any of the songs in the game depending on their own life. I feel like we’re creating a playful bond with the players through the soundtrack in the game.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available to play now on , , and .