Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the debut project of Sandfall Interactive, a small French studio founded by a group of developers with backgrounds at major companies such as Ubisoft, who chose to launch their first game with a bold and risky ambition: a turn-based RPG aimed at an audience largely accustomed to real-time action games. The story unfolds on the fictional continent of Lumière, a world with a Belle Époque charm threatened by the Paintress. The playable cast, Expedition 33, sets out from the city of Lumière to confront the Paintress at her monolith, in a journey that soon becomes a deep meditation on grief, loss and the acceptance of death, themes rooted partly in the personal experience of creative director Guillaume Broche, who dedicated the game to his mother's memory.

On the combat side, the game layers a real-time dodge-and-parry system requiring sharp reflexes and precise timing on top of a classic turn-based structure, an approach that recalls Sekiro and the Mario and Luigi series and makes every encounter feel tactical and physical at once. The cast of characters, each with a distinct skill tree and specific narrative weight, moves through a world that alternates linear exploration with more open, breathable areas, all carried by an orchestral score from Lorien Testard repeatedly named among the year's best. The art direction, indebted to late-nineteenth-century French painting, builds memorable settings that combine decay and beauty, while the writing, backed by a strong voice cast, balances lighter moments with passages of real emotional intensity.

Made by a team of just over thirty people under often difficult production conditions, the game was received from launch as one of the most significant surprises in the genre's recent history, able to stand toe to toe with productions backed by vastly larger budgets. In the months following release, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 gathered near-unanimous acclaim from critics and players alike, culminating in a Game of the Year win and a record total of nine awards at The Game Awards, the best result ever achieved by a debut title in the show's history.