Hey there 👋 I’m Clément,
A french game designer, programmer and storyteller. I specialize in systems design with a focus on player agency and emergent gameplay.
I like providing players with “toy boxes” that empower them to solve problems in their own way. My approach is that of a “digital craftsman”: I tinker in-engine to prove design through experimentation. Whether it’s writing branching dialogue, balancing mathematical economies, or mocking up cohesive UI, I ensure every detail serves a singular, immersive vision.
My constant curiosity for new technologies and workflows makes me a source of innovation and a versatile bridge between creative and technical teams. I don’t hesitate to build my own scripts and tools to assist my design work.
I’m not only a tech guy, I’m well versed into narrative design and script writing, I have successfully wrote stories, characters and dialogues for games and other types of media.
My work
Wartales
Main systems and content design (4 DLCs)
For each DLC, designed the core gameplay system as well as contents such as enemies, skills, unique battles, weapons, crafts etc.
Fires in the Capital: A chaos meter rises over time and depending on player actions. Everytime the chaos exceeds a threshold, new encounters (with their unique battle types) or worldmap events happen.
The Curse of Rigel: If I’d have a nickel everytime I worked on something with werewolves, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice. In this instance, I designed the new player class Thaumaturge as well as the King’s Knights faction and Werewolves units, with mechanics to make them upgradable through grafts and injections.
The Fief: Small city builder that you can manage in between rests, highly systemic gameplay with resource management, growth balancing, lots of player-facing features unlocked as the fief grows.
The Beast Hunt: Region-wide system of “hunting the Beast” by gathering clues about it, designed an ambitious bossfight against this legendary beast in the game’s lore with very tight production restrictions. In parallel the free update coming with the DLC introduced the Huntsman job and Fierce Animals, a new type of animal unit aiming to make animals more robust and viable late-game.
Century: Age of Ashes
Duck-tective
Divunity
Games that inspired me
Wario Ware DIY
This is where it all started. I can’t remember if I’d truly considered becoming a game creator before playing this game (although I remember very young crude attempts at making board games based on Crash Bandicoot).
My dad brought me to the supermarket to buy me an NDS game for my birthday, I was interested in Wario Ware and had the choice between Wario Ware: DIY and Wario Ware: Touched!, I couldn’t decide. Getting impatient, my dad looked for arguments so I finally pick one. Applying the practical logic of a consumer looking for the best value-per-kilo of tomato sauce, he pointed to the back of the box: « This one has more stuff in it, it lets you make your own games too ».
He probably doesn’t even remember it, he wouldn’t recognize the game box if I showed him today. But I was sold, this made perfect sense I thought.
If I can make my own games, then there are infinite games!
I went home with a new game and an unforeseen new career path. It was very probably on a Wednesday.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
I have to admit that I’m not a big fan traditional turn-based RPGs (which most people would call JRPGs). Hence why I didn’t expect that game to leave such a mark on me. Mechanics that, when someone pitched them to me felt “gimmicky” were in fact extremely well-made, integrated and enjoyable ; namely shooting/aiming, QTEs and timing parries. Every single gameplay area’s environment design is absolutely stunning, the worldbuilding is incredible as well as the story.
Although conceptually the game’s base mechanics don’t reinvent the wheel, it reminded me that great execution of well-known concepts is hard to make, crucial, and can yield to a masterpiece. The very way of executing those concepts is a designer’s DNA and make the experience in itself unique. It reminded me that kinda linear gameplay/storyline don’t necessarily make a boring game when the experience is expertly crafted.
Realizing this project began in Montpellier in 20191 - the same year I was studying game development in that very city - put my own journey into a perspective I still can’t quite put into words. It’s a reminder that masterpieces are built by people exactly like me, and that this is the kind of experience I’ve been wanting to make since joining this industry in 2019.
Minecraft
I’ve been playing this on and off since 2010. As a kid, I couldn’t imagine a game with so many possibilities even existing, what do you mean you can make everything you want?
This game taught me logic gates with redstone, I ended up bringing a USB stick with the game on it to middle-school (6ème) and showing it to my Tech Ed teacher. He gave me truth tables that I filled with ease and he was impressed.
The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood
How to create engaging story and gameplay when your character stays in one room? A perfect example of worldbuilding beyond what’s shown on the screen yet that feels extremely present. Player agency is the main moving force, the story is deeply touching without feeling artificial.
Don’t Starve
A game with a unique identity and ambience beyond its recognizable artstyle. A very sandbox-y experience with heavily distilled environmental storytelling. Content is so rich to this day I feel I have only experienced a third of it.
Baldur’s Gate 3
When I played this game, I could feel it was made by people who cared deeply for it. The attention to detail especially, is something I strive to achieve one day.
One of the pillars of the game is that “you can do whatever you want”, but like for real. Want to kill a main NPC? You can. The game then accounts for it later: introduces a new NPC to take its place, changes slightly a cutscene. This means, the world reacts to a lot of player actions, which is one of the core things that make a game world feel alive, and a lot of games miss. It also means, despite the game’s storyline having a few select endings, each player’s walkthrough feels truly unique through sheer number of combination.
Although the game experience is understandably limited by the story bounds (you can’t stray off to Waterdeep and become a hot dog seller), everything in that “scenario bubble” is lively, extremely intricate and refined, and offers utter freedom.
Factorio
Epitome of systemic gameplay and one of the most famous automation games. What I particularly love is that the automation is at the center of the player experience, neither the graphics, animations, controls or UI get in your way, the game makes the player interaction with the factories as seamless and direct as possible.
The retro early 3D PC games - kinda fallout-ish - artstyle is very much enjoyable to me too.
Footnotes
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Actually the early development started in Paris in 2019, then the team moved to Montpellier. ↩