Sandfall Entertainment has been celebrating the massive success of its turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In a recent interview after a dominant performance at the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, creative director Guillaume Broche spoke about how the studio was feeling, and how it never expected the game to get so big. In a post-show interview with Radio Times Gaming, Broche noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was being developed with the thought that “it’s going to be cool” rather than “it’s going to be big.”
“I think that people don’t really realise that now [Clair Obscur: Expedition 33]’s become big, but before the launch, it was not supposed to be big and I think we all felt the same thing,” he said. “It’s like ‘it’s going to be cool.’ It’s not going to be big, ‘it’s going to be cool’. And what’s happening today is, as we say, nobody understands what’s really happening.”
“But it’s a weird feeling, you know, when you put your heart out into the world and the world embraces it and gives you so much love back. Like we get so much love from the players, all the messages and the fan art on the covers that, it’s so touching and incredible that it’s very hard to explain. But we are still shocked. Yeah, I can say that for sure.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 picked up quite a few awards at the Golden Joystick Awards 2025 across a variety of different categories. Along with awards like best storytelling, best visual design, best soundtrack, best lead performer (Jennifer English for Maelle), best supporting performer (Ben Starr as Verso) and studio of the year (Sandfall Interactive), the title also managed to grab the ultimate game of the year award at the event.
Since its release across PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been quite popular. Just last month, Sandfall Interactive had confirmed that it had sold 5 million copies of the game worldwide. The title has also managed to hit other impressive milestones, such as the soundtrack – composed by Lorien Testard – crossing the 333 million streams mark since the game’s launch.
Keeping in mind Broche’s statement about the studio wanting to ensure that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as “cool” during development rather than “big”, he had also previously spoken about how important it was for the studio to keep the game’s overall scope narrow, and how having a limited budget and resources helped with further refinement of the title.
“I don’t think we would have wanted to radically add unnecessary content or change the overall scope of our game though – I think part of the reason some fans enjoyed their time with our game was how we tried to respect the players’ time by not artificially padding out the game time excessively,” said Broche. “In some ways, having a limited budget and resources is helpful to narrow down the scope of a title and distil the vision to the core elements that make it great, and maybe having unlimited scope and budget would’ve made it a less engaging game for our players. It’s hard to know!”
For more details, check out our review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
