Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

• 1. The Painted Number

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  In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a being called the Paintress paints a number on an enormous rock formation known as the Monolith. Every person at that age or older then vanishes. The event is called the Gommage. It happens once a year, and the painted number keeps falling. After each one, volunteers from the city of Lumière set out for the mainland to kill her before she can paint again. Expedition 33 is the newest of those parties. The game is a 2025 role-playing adventure from Sandfall Interactive, set in a dark fantasy version of the Belle Époque. This documentary asks why the Paintress paints at all. It asks how a small studio built something so ambitious. And it asks how a turn-based game, a style many studios had stopped chasing, ended up sweeping the biggest awards in the industry.

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• 2. Lumière and the Continent

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  Sixty-seven years before the story begins, a disaster called the Fracture cut Lumière off from the rest of the continent. The mainland that its expeditions reach is far from empty. Hostile monsters called Nevrons roam it, and they are the main reason earlier expeditions failed. Creatures called Gestrals and Grandis have also settled across the land, and most of them are friendly.

  Four volunteers anchor the early story. Gustave, voiced by Charlie Cox, is a resourceful engineer with a mechanical arm. Maelle, voiced by Jennifer English, is the youngest member of the Expedition and Gustave's foster sister. Lune, voiced by Kirsty Rider, is a brilliant scholar and mage. Sciel, voiced by Shala Nyx, is a calm and cheerful farmer who became a teacher.

  On the mainland they meet others. Andy Serkis voices Renoir, a mysterious elderly man who hunts the party ruthlessly once it lands. Ben Starr voices Verso, a stranger who watches over them from a distance. Rich Keeble voices Monoco, a Gestral connected to Verso. Maxence Cazorla voices Esquie, a mythical creature who carries the party across the land.

  The levels themselves are linear, but an overworld map called The Continent links them together. Esquie gradually learns to swim, to fly and to dive underwater. Those skills are required to advance the story and to reach the optional zones.

  Of all these figures, Verso and Renoir turn out to share a bond that reshapes the entire quest.

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• 3. Secrets in the Canvas

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  On the day of a Gommage, Gustave says goodbye to Sophie, his 33-year-old ex-lover. He has only a year left to live, so he joins Expedition 33 with his foster sister Maelle. The landing goes badly. A white-haired stranger named Renoir kills most of the expeditioners. Gustave survives and finds Lune and Sciel. Maelle is saved by the Curator, an entity that helps the expeditioners. They recruit Esquie, and Maelle begins seeing a masked girl in visions. Then Renoir attacks again and kills Gustave as he tries to defend her.

  Verso now steps in. He rescues Maelle, helps the others escape, and joins the expedition. He reveals that Renoir is his father and that both belonged to the very first expedition. The masked girl, he says, is his sister Alicia. All of them received immortality from the Paintress, and Renoir guards her to protect his family. Verso is tired of eternal life and wants to kill her.

  After Monoco joins, the party reaches Renoir's mansion to destroy the Paintress' heart, which resembles the Curator and powers a barrier around her. Renoir teleports the mansion and the heart away. Lune then devises a new plan. The Curator will forge a weapon from the hearts of powerful beings called Axons, and it will pierce the barrier. Inside the Monolith, the party defeats Renoir and the Paintress. They return to Lumière as heroes. Only Verso knows that the Curator is the true culprit behind the Gommage and that the Paintress had been holding him back. Without her protection, the Curator kills everyone in Lumière except Verso.

  Flashbacks to Paris in the early 20th century explain why. The Dessendre family is made up of Aline, her husband Renoir, their son Verso, their eldest daughter Clea and their youngest daughter Alicia. They are artists who can create worlds inside magical paintings, and Lumière sits inside a canvas made by Verso Dessendre. A rival faction sets fire to their mansion. Verso Dessendre dies and Alicia is disfigured. Grief-stricken, Aline enters her son's canvas, creates copies of her family and becomes the Paintress.

  Long stays inside a canvas are unhealthy, so Renoir tries to force Aline out. Their clash causes the Fracture. To tip the stalemate in her father's favor, Clea creates the Nevrons and sends Alicia in to help him. Aline's power overwhelms Alicia, who is reborn as Maelle with no memory of her past.

  In the present, Maelle regains her memories and revives herself after her apparent death. Verso admits he tricked the expedition into helping him expel Aline from the canvas. Maelle confronts the Curator, who is revealed to be Renoir Dessendre, hoping he will bring everyone back. He plans to erase the canvas instead, because his daughter chose to be Maelle rather than Alicia. Maelle revives the other expeditioners, and a battle for control of the canvas follows. Aline returns, Renoir is defeated, and he leaves with his wife.

  The final choice belongs to the player. Maelle intends to remain in the canvas indefinitely, just as Aline did. Verso approaches the last fragment of the dead son's soul, which sustains the painting, and wants it to pass on. That would erase the canvas and force Maelle out. If the player sides with Maelle, she rebuilds Lumière and revives its people, including Gustave and Sophie. She also recreates Verso against his will, and she begins to show signs of staying in the canvas too long. If the player sides with Verso, he banishes Maelle and persuades the fragment to stop. The canvas disappears, taking Verso and the remaining expeditioners with it. Back in reality, the Dessendre family reconciles after coming to terms with the death of Verso Dessendre.

  Whichever ending the player chooses, the road there runs through a combat system that blends menus with reflexes.

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• 4. Combat and Customization

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  On each turn, a player chooses between using an item, making a melee attack that earns Ability Points, or spending those points on ranged attacks and Skills. Ranged attacks are aimed freely, much like in a third-person shooter. Completing a quick time event while using a Skill improves its effect. When enemies take their turns, the player can dodge, parry or jump over attacks in real time. Parrying demands tighter timing than dodging, but it earns Ability Points and opens the door to a counterattack.

  A stamina system lets players "Break" an enemy and stun it for a short time. Later in the game come Gradient Attacks, Gradient Counters and Gradient Skills, all of which deal heavy damage. The party tracks them on a shared gauge that slowly fills as Skills are used. Both sides can inflict status effects, and some enemies have weak points or are vulnerable to particular elements. If the whole party falls, reserve characters can step in. Players may also flee from minor enemies.

  Six characters are playable, and each has a distinct skill tree, weapons and mechanics. Lune's Skills generate elemental "Stains" that she can spend to strengthen later Skills. Maelle, the fencer, switches between Stances that change her Skills, damage and defense. Sciel, who wields a scythe, uses magical cards to apply and stack "Foretell" on enemies, then cashes it in for maximum damage. Gustave builds up charge with every attack and releases it for greater damage. Verso gains "Perfection" ranks for landing hits, parrying and avoiding harm, and his damage grows with the rank. Monoco can transform into enemies and borrow their abilities, and his "Bestial Wheel" spins to boost some of them.

  Each level-up grants three attribute points. They go into five core stats: Vitality for maximum health, Might for attack power, Agility for how often a character acts, Defense for damage reduction and Luck for critical rate. Further customization comes from equipable "Pictos", of which there are 210 unique items. A character can wear three at a time. After a Picto has been used in combat four times, the player masters it. Its passive bonus, called a Lumina, can then be equipped by other characters, limited by each character's Lumina Points. Collected "Chroma Catalysts" upgrade weapons at camp, and higher-level weapons hit harder and add perks. While playing as Verso, players can also talk with other expedition members at camp and raise their relationship levels. That unlocks new cinematics, skills and quests.

  Each level has several Expedition Flags, where the party heals, fast travels, restocks items and spends attribute and skill points. Resting at a flag respawns most enemies. Players who wander off the main route find hidden resources, side quests, collectibles, outfits, Gestral merchants and optional bosses. The game offers multiple difficulty options and a New Game Plus mode that raises the challenge while keeping every character's progression.

  Building a system this layered was the work of a studio far smaller than the genre usually demands.

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• 5. A Studio Takes Shape

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  Guillaume Broche was a Ubisoft employee in 2019 when the first ideas for the game took hold, not long before the COVID-19 pandemic began. It grew into a passion project shaped by the games of his childhood. He asked developer friends for help with a demo. In April 2020 he also posted on Reddit looking for voice actors. To work on the project full-time, he left Ubisoft that year and formed Sandfall Interactive with his old friend François Meurisse and fellow Ubisoft developer Tom Guillermin.

  Three more people completed the six-person kick-off team. Lorien Testard, the composer, was found when Broche saw his post on a French indie game forum linking a track from his SoundCloud page. Nicholas Maxson-Francombe, the art director, was recruited off ArtStation. Jennifer Svedberg-Yen had answered the Reddit post and was cast in the original demo. As development went on she took on more responsibility and became the lead writer.

  Sandfall signed a partnership with Kepler Interactive, officially announced in early 2023, and the publisher provided funding. The studio grew to about thirty developers, three of them former Ubisoft employees, including Broche and Guillermin. The money also paid for outside help. Eight freelance animators in South Korea handled combat animation. A few dozen testers from the firm QLOC covered quality assurance. About half a dozen developers from Ebb Software ported the game to consoles. Translators from Riotloc handled localization, and Side UK and Studio Anatole oversaw voice casting in English and French. The studio also hired performance capture artists and brought in musicians for the recording sessions.

  The funding made it possible to cast experienced actors such as Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis and Ben Starr. Cox joked that he spent barely four hours in the studio and felt like a fraud for the praise he received. Svedberg-Yen corrected the record on her Instagram account. The session took around 8 hours, she said, and she praised his professionalism and efficiency.

  On the technical side, the game began in Unreal Engine 4 and moved to Unreal Engine 5 for better rendering and animation. Its Nanite feature allowed higher-fidelity assets, and Lumen gave more realistic lighting. Adopting Lumen meant reworking the lighting in most environments. Unreal Engine 5 also offered stronger character creation tools than the Reallusion Character Creator the team had been using. For background objects such as rocks, the team used ready-made assets so it could spend its effort on large "hero assets" that leave an impression. Broche credits the simplicity of modern engines for making the project possible. The total budget was less than 10 million dollars.

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• 6. Reinvention and Influences

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  The project began under the codename "Project W" and was first known as We Lost, around the time Broche appealed for help on Reddit. Its demo showed a steampunk world inspired by Victorian England, with science fiction touches including zombies and aliens. About six months in, potential investors told Broche to "think bigger" and to imagine what he would make without limited resources. He reset the whole story. The team chose the Belle Époque, a period the French developers knew well and considered more distinctive, and drew on the Art Deco movement for the look of the world.

  The new narrative started from a painting Broche admired, which led him to picture a giantess and a doomsday clock. He also took some inspiration from La Horde du Contrevent, a French fantasy novel by Alain Damasio. In that book, a horde of adventurers trained since childhood journey toward the mythical "Extrême-Amont", the source of all winds. Broche's premise then met an unrelated short story that Svedberg-Yen had written for fun. In it, a painter who could travel through her own works became lost in one, and her daughter set out to save her.

  The central theme of losing loved ones came from Broche's mother, according to Svedberg-Yen, and it became the "final piece". With the draft stuck, Broche asked his mother what the worst thing that could happen to her would be. She answered that it would be losing any of her children. That answer became the foundation for Aline, and for her decision to dwell in her departed son's canvas. Svedberg-Yen says the end of Act I, with Gustave's death, was fixed early as part of the emotional journey the pair wanted. Maelle and Lune survived from We Lost, though their design and characterization were reimagined.

  Broche said the aim was a high-fidelity turn-based RPG, a style he felt AAA developers had neglected. Final Fantasy was the main inspiration, and producer François Meurisse singled out Final Fantasy VIII, IX and X. Broche praised the user interface and camera work of Persona 5, which made battles feel "like you're watching a movie". He also looked to Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon, role-playing games made for Microsoft's push to market its Xbox consoles in Japan. Their quick time events in combat left a mark. The dodge and parry systems owe a debt to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice from FromSoftware.

  Smaller touches came from real life. Noco and Monoco take their names from the Swedish energy drink Nocco. Broche and Guillermin met at a Ubisoft subsidiary in Malmö, Sweden, where a refrigerator was reportedly stocked with it. Sandfall's dog, also named Monoco, is credited on the studio's website as its "Happiness Manager".

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• 7. The Score

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  Lorien Testard composed the music and wrote the lyrics, and he was later joined by Alice Duport-Percier. She composed the vocal lines and was the primary vocalist during recording. Testard used a range of leitmotifs for the character themes and wrote across a variety of musical genres. The soundtrack was released on streaming platforms, together with a limited-edition multi-vinyl set.

  During the first week of May 2025, it reached the top of Billboard's Classical Albums chart and its Classical Crossover Albums chart. It held No. 1 for six consecutive weeks. In early October 2025, five months after release, the developers announced that it had passed 333 million streams. It had also spent over 10 weeks at No. 1 on those two Billboard charts. It had reached No. 1 on the iTunes Top 100 Albums chart in nine countries.

  Reviewers praised how adaptable the score was. Kyle Hilliard of Game Informer pointed to the contrast between "somber piano music and haunting vocals", which underline the characters' emotional experiences, and combat themes that "bring the energy back up at precisely the right moment". Edge called the score immense and "operatic".

  The Game Audio Network Guild Awards list the song "Lumière", by Testard and Duport-Percier, in its Best Original Song category.

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• 8. Acclaim and Controversy

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  The game was finished and declared gold on the 22nd of March 2025, coincidentally 33 days before its release on the 24th of April 2025. It arrived on PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S, and it was available on Xbox Game Pass from day one. Maximum Entertainment distributed the physical version in North America, Bandai Namco Entertainment in Europe and Asia, and Sega in Japan. Sales climbed quickly. The game sold 500,000 copies in 24 hours, 1 million in 3 days, 2 million in 12 days and 3.3 million in 33 days. By October 2025 it had passed 5 million, and the developers marked the milestone by announcing a free update with a new location, extra late-game bosses, new costumes and expanded language support. The update arrived after the game won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025. In December 2025, Xbox Wire reported that it was the biggest third-party launch on Xbox Game Pass that year. As of April 2026, it has sold 8 million units.

  Metacritic reported "universal acclaim", and the game earned the highest user score in the site's history. OpenCritic found that 98% of critics recommended it. On Steam, 95% of more than 100,000 reviewers were favorable, for an "Overwhelmingly positive" rating. In Japan, four Famitsu critics each gave it 9 out of 10, for 36 out of 40.

  Edge called the art direction "dreamily intoxicating". Richard Wakeling of GameSpot agreed, though he found the world "mechanically uninteresting … to explore". Others criticized the lack of a mini-map, which can cause disorientation. IGN's Michael Higham praised how the story "frames mortality, grief, and the small moments of joy we find". Liam Croft of Push Square said that "every cutscene remains gripping". Malindy Hetfeld of The Guardian wrote that "a successful counter felt deeply satisfying every time". Ed Nightingale of Eurogamer highlighted how each character introduces "a new system to learn". Josh Brown of PCGamesN called it a "hyper-stimulating take on a genre once deemed too slow and stale for the HD era". Edge warned that side quests can leave players overleveled and make later bosses easier, yet called it "imprudent" to suggest changing what it saw as a "masterpiece". Wakeling concluded that the missteps were not enough to detract from a game with "all the makings of an RPG classic".

  The praise reached the French government. After the 1 million sales milestone, President Emmanuel Macron called the game "a shining example of French audacity and creativity". After the December awards he wrote of "a historic first for a French title" and "great pride for Montpellier and for France". Michaël Delafosse, the mayor of Montpellier, where the studio is based, predicted it would be "a reference in the international history of video games". In February 2026 the French Ministry of Culture knighted Sandfall's developers in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Hideo Kojima, Neil Druckmann and Ken Levine also voiced admiration, citing the small team's flexibility, the story, or the quality achieved without heavy monetization. Phil Spencer and Todd Howard each named it their personal Game of the Year for 2025.

  At The Game Awards 2025, the game received thirteen nominations and won nine, including Game of the Year. That broke the nomination and win record that The Last of Us Part II had set in 2020. Sandfall also won all seven awards it was nominated for at the 2025 Golden Joystick Awards, including Ultimate Game of the Year. At the 29th D.I.C.E. Awards it was nominated eight times, tying for the most, and won five, including Game of the Year. It topped the year-end lists of publications including Associated Press, Rolling Stone, Time, IGN and GameSpot. More than 190 Japanese developers and celebrities voted it Game of the Year in Famitsu's yearly poll. It is the second game after Baldur's Gate 3 to win Game of the Year at all five major ceremonies: the Golden Joystick Awards, The Game Awards, the D.I.C.E. Awards, the GDC Awards and the BAFTA Games Awards. It is also the first debut title to do so.

  One honor was taken back. The game first won "Indie Game of the Year" and "Indie Debut Game" at the 2025 Indie Game Awards. It was later disqualified from both, after it emerged that it shipped with placeholder textures made with generative artificial intelligence. The team patched those textures out five days after release. The awards went instead to Blue Prince and Sorry We're Closed.

  Broche has confirmed that Clair Obscur is the name of an intended franchise and that Expedition 33 is one of its titles. He is unsure whether future games would continue its story. A live-action adaptation, announced in January 2025, is in development at Story Kitchen in collaboration with Sandfall.

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