The music of the 2025 role-playing video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, developed by Sandfall Interactive, comprises a soundtrack album and extended play composed principally by Lorien Testard. The soundtrack of Expedition 33, the first professional video game Testard wrote music for, was composed towards a wide variety of musical genres and styles, ranging from classical to heavy metal, and made substantial usage of leitmotifs. During the five years of its development, Testard was joined by vocal artist Alice Duport-Percier, who took on the role of co-composer, as well as by approximately thirty other musicians and a nine-person choir for the recording sessions.

The album, totaling 154 unique songs, comprises the soundtrack of Expedition 33s base game, released on 24 April 2025. It was met with unanimous praise from both audiences and critics for its distinctive atmosphere, emotional weight, and adaptability. Physical vinyl releases in collaboration with record label Laced Records were announced in July 2025. They were shipped, alongside a subsequently announced CD release, in February 2026. Mirroring its critical and public reception, the album achieved uncommon commercial success for a video game soundtrack, reaching multiple top chart positions in various countries.

The extended play, released on 12 December 2025, consists of 6 additional tracks featured in the "Verso's Drafts" playable level added as part of the game's free 1.5.0 "'Thank You' Update", formally revealed after it was named Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025.

Development

Background

The development of the game's soundtrack was headed by Lorien Testard. From an early age, Testard was interested in video games and their music, having been introduced to them by his father. He began teaching himself musical composition at the age of 16 for roughly three years, after which he attended a formal music school for another three years. He posted his music onto SoundCloud at a rate of approximately one track per week for a year. He has since named the scores of series such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Xenoblade, and Ori, as well as the songs of Joe Hisaishi composed for Studio Ghibli films, as among his personal favorites.

Expedition 33 was Testard's first professional video game for which he composed music. He became connected with the game's director Guillaume Broche in early 2020 after the latter listened to one of Testard's SoundCloud tracks he had posted onto an online forum dedicated to indie games. He was subsequently asked to join the project, at the time titled We Lost. During this period, Testard was employed as a guitar teacher, composing for We Lost in his free time. The COVID-19 pandemic occurred early into development, rendering him unable to instruct his students. This led him to quit his job, allowing him to work on the game full-time. Past an early script and conceptual artwork for the virtual landscapes, Testard had little explicit direction when composing, given relatively free rein to "really do whatever [he] wanted" to adapt the story's atmosphere into musical form. Both Broche and Testard had large ambitions on the scope of the score; their initial benchmark was to compose three songs, one custom battle theme, and one custom boss theme for each in-game environment. Although he attempted to limit the influence of other musicians on his songwriting to make the game's soundtrack feel distinct, he has acknowledged subconscious inspiration from the French artists he was exposed to throughout his life, including Alain Bashung.

Composition

Testard placed heavy emphasis on making the soundtrack feel dynamic, responding to the player's—and the greater world's—activities as the game's narrative progresses. During combat, accompanying music is designed to soften during long-winded periods of recuperation and to gradually intensify to complement the fight's climax and conclusion. Compensating for the overall unpredictability of the player's actions was cited by Testard as among the most challenging aspects of composition. He examined the emotional core of every specific battle, location, and character in a vacuum, guiding him as to what mood each song ought to elicit. This led to an assemblage of distinct genres and musical styles, including jazz, rock, neoclassical and electronic music. He would later work with over forty specialized instrumentalists during recording, additionally using hundreds of other synthesized instruments through the digital audio workstation (DAW) Nuendo. Such instruments included the guitar, saxophone, cümbüş, bawu, piano, and bass. Avoiding repetition was a key goal for Testard; he explained, "... even if a player doesn't connect with one particular track, it won't become repetitive — they'll move on to a new environment and fight with a new musical atmosphere as their adventure continues." He also sought to occasionally make more comic and lighthearted pieces to offset the game's melancholic themes. For instance, the theme of the in-game mime enemies, titled "In Lumière's Name", was composed using accordions to the effect of making them catchy and memorable, while the music associated with the Gestral species was deliberately arranged to sound "quirky" and high-octane to match the Gestrals' "chaotic, goofy energy."

Testard made use of leitmotifs for both characters and explorable regions as a means of strengthening the story's emotional themes when invoked. In particular, the motif for the city of Lumière, whose plight is at the center of the plot, is heard in numerous points throughout the game, symbolizing the connection the main cast have to both Lumière itself and their ultimate quest to save its people. Among the earliest tracks Testard composed were the theme songs for individual characters, feeling that they were paramount to conveying the "soul" of Expedition 33. An exception was the theme for Gustave, which was the second-to-last song orchestrated overall. Testard attributed this to the narrative importance of Gustave's death at the end of the game's first act, taking extra care to "find the right melody". He approached the composition of character-driven themes largely through instinct, molding their sound to complement the characters' complex personalities, and he described them as the most enjoyable songs of the score for him to write.

About a year and a half into development, soprano Alice Duport-Percier was recruited by Testard to be the main vocalist but ultimately became co-composer, being the primary writer of the vocal lines. Testard discovered Duport-Percier through videos she uploaded to YouTube, and they initially communicated over email. Testard, who undertook both the role of music composer and lyricist, chose to include lyrics in his songs because he believed that the human voice could best communicate the full range of intricate emotions exhibited by the characters, along with establishing a link between the real-world players and the virtual world of Expedition 33. The narrative's themes of creativity, especially in regard to painting and music, guided him during songwriting. Although a number of songs feature lyrics in living languages (in French mostly, with a few tracks in English), Testard wrote much of the songs with lyrics in a language he specifically invented for the game. One such song is "Alicia", the main menu theme. Testard wanted to give the song a universal appeal, as it would likely be the first players would hear, and did not want to attach it to a specific, real-world language. Meant to symbolically convey emotion, the lyrics are not necessarily intended to be translated word-for-word. To bring the soundtrack to life, over thirty musicians and a nine-person choir would join Testard and Duport-Percier for the recording sessions; including guest vocalists Victor Borba (who had sung numerous tracks for the 2019 video game Devil May Cry 5) and Axelle Verner (a French mezzo-soprano and friend of Duport-Percier). Ben Starr, who voiced Verso in Expedition 33, was also notably featured on the track "Until Next Life".

Releases

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) is the soundtrack album for the base game of Expedition 33, featuring 154 distinct songs with a complete runtime of over eight hours. The pieces are arranged in approximate order of first appearance, mirroring the game's narrative progression. This was intentional, as Testard wanted players to be able to "relive the entire adventure" purely through listening to the album start to finish. A handful of songs heard in-game were not included in the final album, such certain ambient tracks, as some were deemed too similar to one another and thus cut for the sake of brevity.

The soundtrack was published onto streaming services on 24 April 2025. A physical vinyl release was first teased in an X video posted on 23 July by Ben Starr featuring both him and Jennifer English; the latter played Maelle in Expedition 33. The following day, on 24 July, pre-orders for physical album releases in collaboration with Laced Records were officially announced by Testard. The physical vinyl edition includes exclusive and deluxe 6×LP and 2×LP box sets, each containing 63 and 20 tracks respectively. A complete ×8CD collection featuring 179 songs—the original 154 plus 25 extra tracks—was also unveiled on the same occasion. Testard stated during an interview that the process of choosing which songs to include on the LP vinyls took approximately ten days, and he sought to create a sense of continuity for each record by including all songs of a given "atmosphere" on a respective side, e.g., upbeat battle music on one and emotional-driven pieces on the other. All editions shipped in February 2026.

An album containing solely 22 of the aforementioned bonus tracks, titled Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Nos vies en Lumière (Bonus Edition) (Original Soundtrack) was released onto digital platforms on 24 July 2025.

Track listing

All tracks are orchestrated by Lorien Testard. Additional voicework for certain songs was composed by Alice Duport-Percier.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Verso's Drafts (Original Soundtrack) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – Verso's Drafts (Original Soundtrack) comprises 6 additional songs featured in the "Verso's Drafts" area.

The soundtrack was made available worldwide after the release of the game's 1.5.0 update, titled the "'Thank You' Update", on 12 December 2025, formally announced during Guillaume Broche's acceptance speech after Expedition 33 was named Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025. The update was previously teased by Sandfall Interactive in an 8 October blog post, made in commemoration of Expedition 33 selling over 5 million copies.

Track listing

All tracks are orchestrated by Lorien Testard.

Personnel

Information taken from the soundtrack's official YouTube release.

Lorien Testard – Composer Alice Duport-Percier – Vocalist Horacio París – Drum Nisa Addina – Violin Emanuel Pavon – Cello Josué González – Piano Vitaliy Tkachuck – Guitar Khai Zen Yap – SFX

Reception

Critical reception