INTERVIEW
"'Blanc Manger Coco' is already an exquisite corpse: an adjective, a verb and a noun ... You could say that that means nothing, but in fact it is a West Indian pastry shop", explains Louis Roudaut, co-creator of the board game and guest of Europe 1 Friday. Between its launch and today, the game has found its place in French parties and has sold more than 1.5 million copies.
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The adventure began in 2013, when Louis Roudaut's brother returned from a trip to the United States with the game "Cards against humanity" in his suitcases. The principle is simple: a hole phrase is presented to players who must fill in the gaps with the cards they have in hand. In its American version, the game has a particularly squeaky and gritty humor. With a friend, Thibault Lorcy, Breton like him, Louis Roudaut decides to take up the idea in order to create a French version.
"We write all the time and without constraint"
The sentences are crazy, irreverent and always very salty. "It is the concept of the exquisite corpse created by the surrealists, particularly Jacques Prévert, over a century ago," says Louis Roudaut. He and his friend decide to order a prototype made from a thousand copies. Selling media and influencers, they manage to sell their stock. Since then, the game has not stopped seducing.
A little over a year after the start of marketing, other game themes are emerging: a card game on the theme of football, one on wine and many more in preparation. The creators imagine the printed sentences themselves, after a passage "in transport" or a walk "in the street". "We write all the time and without constraints. On five cards that we are going to write, there is one that will come out in one of our games."
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Today, around a thousand new board games are released each year in France. Twenty million boxes were sold in 2019 for a turnover of around 400 million euros. It takes 28 to 30 euros for a copy of "Blanc Manger Coco", and 12 to 14 euros for an extension of two hundred cards.