A Game in Chiaroscuro: Looking Back at Expedition 33

In April 2025, French studio Sandfall Interactive released its first game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It quickly exploded in popularity, selling 3.3 million copies in 33 days, garnering huge amounts of acclaim, and earning numerous year-end awards. This game has had a meteoric rise in its young life. Naturally, a question arises: why did Expedition 33 blow up the way it did, and is it really worth all this hype?

For me, yes it’s absolutely worth the hype – this game is tight. Despite this simple answer, the reasons why are many and varied. Much of it comes down to this: Expedition 33 addresses many things that mainstream gaming has been lacking for a while. There is a lot to talk about, but the focus here will be narrowed down to a summary of a few things. Otherwise, this might dissolve into an excited stream of consciousness which, while fun to write, is perhaps not fun to read.

A look at the combat UI

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG, a genre which one dominated the RPG genre. A personal issue I have with many turn-based games has to do with the enemy’s turn. Sometimes there’s not much reason to pay attention to what your opponent is doing, whether they’re the computer or another player. It’s easy to zone out if all you can do is watch animations you’ve seen before play out. You’re taking that damage whether you’re paying attention or texting a friend about how hard this boss is. Expedition 33 is one of the few turn-based games I’ve played that experiments with the genre, mixing up the standard pattern of combat.

After choosing which attack to use, there are quick time events during the animation, and the outcome of those can add considerable bonus damage. On an enemy’s turn, the player can defend through either dodging or parrying, which adds so much to the half of combat that’s usually a void. Parrying is harder to time correctly than dodging, but if performed perfectly, can be followed up with a damaging counterattack. These feel so good to pull off, the animation and sound combining to say, “you earned this!”

Another addition I find notable and enjoyable is something the game calls Free Aim. During a character’s turn, instead of taking a typical action, the player can instead enter a targeting mode and shoot enemies or objects in the environment. This can be used to weaken enemies by attacking weak spots, neutralize dangerous enemy abilities, and add some nice additional interactivity, which spices up the gameplay.

These iterations on the typical game loop are a major reason the game garnered so much attention. How often do we get to see this kind of innovation in established genres? In established franchises? How often do more experimental games get this kind of mainstream attention? Will we see more games like these garnering mainstream attention in the future? It will be interesting to see what this game inspires in the coming years.

Expedition 33, the night before they depart

It’s not a new observation to say that video game stories tend to be a bit thin. Often it boils down to, “here’s your bad guy, here’s why the player character doesn’t like them, here’s some stuff in the way, go do a bunch of murder, earn shiny loot.” Not that these stories are automatically bad, but as a young medium, video games lack the history or learnings that film or literature have. Games also have the unique wrinkle that story isn’t often the main draw, the gameplay is. Narrative fulfillment isn’t the only way to find entertainment or joy in games, so a simplistic story isn’t necessarily a detriment.

But I think there’s a genuine cause to argue that the quality of Expedition 33‘s story is on par with any classic movie or novel. It’s impossible to go into much detail without discussing major spoilers, but it is layered, thoughtful, compassionate, and allows the player time and space to just feel. This is exactly the kind of narrative nerds like me write books and essays about.

An elegant encapsulation of the story is hidden in its title, at least to those of us who don’t speak French. Clair obscur is the French version of the Italian word chiaroscuro, referring to a painting style where high contrast between light and dark is used to create shape and mood. It’s easy to see where this concept can be applied to Expedition 33‘s story. The sharp contrast between moments of darkest tragedy and lightest joys serves to enhance both. The bleakness of the world makes the goofier moments sweeter, which in turn, makes the saddest moments sting more.

A brief content warning for this next section, there will be discussions of mourning and suicide as depicted in this game, and if you are uncomfortable with these topics, please skip ahead past the next image. If there is a single, unifying theme to Expedition 33, it is grief. It touches the lives of every single character, with all having lost someone they love. How they face (or don’t face) the void left behind defines many of their arcs. For many, their grief has destroyed them. For some it might yet destroy them. The game makes no single stance about how to handle grief or what it means, because it’s a question with no true answers. Instead, it invites the players to explore how other people feel and to understand why.

This isn’t the only sensitive topic the game tackles, Expedition 33 has one of the best depictions of suicidal ideation I’ve personally seen. Suicide is often whittled down to a plot device or a sickness. Here, a number of characters think about or attempt to kill themselves, and they all have different reasons for doing so. The game does an excellent job in allowing the player to feel and understand why its characters might make such a choice. It’s not something with a singular cause or a singular solution, but rather is a complicated part of the human experience. The entire topic is handled with care and compassion, something that can be rare to find even in other mediums. It inspires trust in the developers, that they can tackle difficult themes and do so appropriately.

The world of Clair Obsur: Expedition 33 is vibrant and colorful

The game’s music deserves a spotlight. Though not a primary draw of the game, it absolutely helped in the game’s rise. A particular standout is the theme of a major boss in Act 2: “Une vie à t’aimer” (“A Life to Love You”). It includes a special twist for this song is that francophone listeners will glean extra meaning. The lyrics foreshadow upcoming events and story reveals, which the rest of us have to wait to discover.

The entire soundtrack for this game was composed by an artist named Lorien Testard, in collaboration with Alice Duport-Percier later joining and helping to co-compose many of its vocal tracks, and this was his first major production project. When the game first came out, there was a great deal of hay made on social media about Testard being found on Soundcloud. While it’s true that he uploaded much of his music to SoundCloud, it was posting his music to an indie forum that attracted Sandfall’s attention. The point is, people seemed surprised that an artist of such talent hadn’t been “discovered” before. It’s easy to forget that there’s incredible talent everywhere, and always new things to discover. Sometimes you have to go looking for it, but the journey is worth it.

Tomorrow comes

This is certainly not an exhaustive discussion of the merits of this game. Three of the nominations for the Game Awards were for Best Performance, with Jennifer English winning for her performance as Maelle. I could talk about the art direction, enemy design, the silly costumes, the baguettes, and any number of things.

I’m not claiming this is a perfect game either, because nothing is. If I were feeling nitpicky, I could point out pacing issues in game progression, the inability to save and easily swap loadouts, story moments that didn’t quite work for me, frustrating enemies, and other things of this kind. None of this detracts from what makes this game great, or why it’s gotten so much deserved attention and love.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a breath of fresh air, a rare gem in a medium that can be so often steered by corporate interest rather than artistic ambition. Sandfall Interactive has already said it will not be making a sequel to Expedition 33, and I am content with that. As much as I would like to explore the world more, the story stands strong on its own, and leaving it that way is a brave choice in an era which has so much emphasis on franchises. We will all just have to wait and see what Sandfall, and the developers they inspire, will do next.