Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche was previously a brand development manager and narrative lead at Ubisoft, but left to found Sandfall Interactive in 2020 when he found himself "bored" and "wanting to do something different," as he told BBC.
Broche had a hankering for an RPG shaped, as co-founder François Meurisse told us earlier this year, by a "heritage of JRPGs" like Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9, and 10. For its reactive turn-based combat system, the team also stood on the shoulders of games like Sekiro, with other systemic bits from deckbuilders added in for texture.
That dreamed-up RPG evolved into Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the highest-rated new game of 2025 (numerically tied with Blue Prince on Metacritic, but with more reviews solidifying its score) and a massively successful debut for Sandfall.
Clair Obscur sold over 1 million copies in three days – a good launch for almost any game short of GTA 6, and especially so for a new, relatively small studio.
There can be some unfairness in the narrative that all you have to do to make the game of the year is leave Ubisoft – Assassin's Creed Shadows is notably good and doing pretty well – but there's also no denying that AAA factories like Ubisoft aren't known for putting out wild, experimental games like Clair Obscur.
Increasingly, refreshing and year-defining hits like Palworld, Balatro, and Astro Bot are found outside the AAA sphere. Ex-Blizzard dev Chris Kaleiki told us earlier this year that the AA game space is due for a comeback, as it's healthier and often more fun than making the AAA "colosseum," and he's not the only one who thinks so. And Broche was clearly "bored" for a reason.
Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida describes Clair Obscur, a $50 game, as the "perfect balance" of AAA fidelity and ambition but sensible scope, and argues it's "the path the industry should be pursuing" as unsustainable production budgets pile up elsewhere.
Broche tells BBC that much of his success comes down to the Covid game boom and some "massive luck," including some good fortune in Sandfall's hiring process. As one example, the game's lead writer was first hired as a voice actor after she "saw a post on Reddit" calling for auditions.
"We have, I think, an amazing team mostly of junior people but they are so incredibly invested in the project and talented," Broche said. "Somehow it worked, which still makes no sense to me after all these years."
Square Enix is "probably kicking itself" seeing the success of realistic turn-based JRPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, analyst says, after being "reticent to do it with the Final Fantasy series."
