Broche directs, designs and writes Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a role playing game built on a premise of annual erasure: each year a figure paints a number, and everyone of that age disappears. The combat combines turn based structure with real time parries, so a player is never passive during an enemy's turn.
He worked at a large publisher before leaving to found a studio in southern France dedicated to making the kind of role playing game he felt nobody was making any more. Japanese role playing tradition is the declared model, filtered through French art history and a visual language drawn from turn of the century painting rather than from medieval fantasy.
Recurring subjects: mortality on a schedule, grief structured as an expedition, and beauty coexisting with horror. The design pairs a highly stylised world with systems that demand precision, and the writing treats its central conceit as a genuine emotional problem rather than as a puzzle to be solved.
His studio's debut drew exceptional critical response and commercial success for a first project from a small team, and it has been widely cited as evidence that a modest European studio can compete with far larger productions on ambition rather than on budget.
For players who want turn based combat that still demands reflexes. Suited to anyone nostalgic for a particular era of role playing games, and to those interested in art direction drawn from painting rather than from other games.
