2025 Belonged to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Mike's Musings ✨ @expedition33

There is a terrific "How it started/How it's going" meme going around contrasting Sandfall Interactive head Guillaume Broche's initial, charming, kickstarter appeal on reddit with an image of him accepting every award known to man at last weeks Game Awards.

I’m not sure anyone involved with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 expected to walk away from the ceremony with their arms full of trophies, but here we are. Game of the Year, best Debut, Art Direction nods, critical darling status cemented, and a room full of developers looking faintly annoyed that a relatively small French studio just strolled in and stole their lunch money.

As noted in our own glowing review, Clair Obscur is the first game from Sandfall Interactive, a studio that, until very recently, was mostly known for not existing. Founded by former Ubisoft developers, the team hovered somewhere in the “AA but dangerously competent” space, reportedly numbering in the few dozens rather than the hundreds.

No vast satellite studios. No eighteen-hour mocap shoots for incidental NPCs. No decade long development hell. Just a relatively small team, a very clear vision, and the audacity to build a turn based RPG in 2025 and assume people might still care.

They were right.

Critical reception was, frankly, obscene.

 
Reviewers latched onto the combat’s hybrid turn based/parry system, the striking art direction, and a narrative that managed to be both unapologetically French and refreshingly weird without disappearing up its own turtleneck. It didn’t just review well, it stuck. It was the sort of event that prompts follow-up essays, lore threads, and people quietly restarting it at 2am because a line of dialogue suddenly made sense.

One the of delightful, incidental side effects of the shocking success was everyone falling in love with Charlie Cox, whose response to the game’s impact and awards circuit has been a highlight in itself. Clearly delighted, faintly baffled, and radiating the energy of a man who showed up to do a voice role and accidentally became part of one of the year’s most talked-about games.

His reactions, equal parts pride and “wait, really?” were charming in a way that money can’t manufacture. No corporate polish. No rehearsed hype. Just genuine surprise that this strange, melancholy RPG about ritualised extinction had resonated so widely as he graciously defered much of the praise to motion capture actor Maxence Cazorla.

In the long term Clair Obscur’s success should spark some uncomfortable conversations at the big studios. You don’t need a £200 million budget to make something beautiful. You don’t need a live service roadmap. You don’t need to bleed players dry with deluxe editions, early access tiers, or a cosmetic shop that costs more than a weekly Asda shop.

You do need a strong artistic identity, a focused scope, and the confidence to release a finished product at a reasonable price.

Which is, of course, exactly why most of the industry will learn absolutely nothing from it.

Publishers will applaud politely, greenlight another extraction shooter, and continue chasing the same over monetised trends while quietly wondering why players keep gravitating toward games that feel handmade, intentional, and complete.

Clair Obscur didn’t just win awards, it exposed how unnecessary a lot of modern excess really is.

There’s no underdog narrative here. No pity applause. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 earned every bit of its success by being confident, strange, mechanically thoughtful, and unapologetically itself.

It didn’t try to be everything. It didn’t outstay its welcome. It didn’t treat players like walking wallets.

In an industry that often confuses scale with ambition, Sandfall Interactive showed what happens when you aim smaller, care more, and actually finish the thing you set out to make.

And yes, the industry should take notes.

It won’t.

But it should.