Garavaryan spoke about how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ticks many boxes that one might expect from a AAA RPG, from its polished gameplay to the fidelity of visuals, as well as the quality of its voice acting and soundtrack. However, he also noted that the novel experience offered by the title’s narrative played an important role thanks to its blend of old-school turn-based combat with more modern takes on the fantasy RPG genre.

“I think historically there was always some sort of space in terms of the visual fidelity,” he said. “I think there is less importance given by players on how high the visual fidelity is when you play a video game today. I also think the size of the experience, the depth, the number of hours you get out of the content is maybe less important than how exceptional, how interesting, how novel the experience is.”

The publisher and studio had discussions about pricing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lower than its contemporaries specifically because potential buyers would then find it to be “respectful of their money,” as well as their time.

“I think ultimately we’ve seen a number of larger companies increase prices quite regularly,” Garavaryan explained. “We try to think, ‘what do we think the price should be?’ And then we price it lower, so that when players buy a game from us, they feel like they’re getting a bargain. We want them to feel like we are respectful of their money, respectful of their time, and that fundamentally, every time they buy a game from us, they’re getting a great deal.”

The price also helped set Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 apart from its contemporaries, noted Garavaryan. The modern state of the gaming industry has seen prices going up across the board, from individual titles to subscription services and even consoles. Despite this, there has also never really been a time when players have had access to so many high-quality games on a regular basis.

“I think we are living in an industry where players have access to exceptional video games on a weekly basis,” Garavaryan said. “If you want to deserve their attention, their money, I think you need to bring something to the table that’s truly great and truly special.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details about the title, check out our review. Also take a look at why the studio doesn’t believe that a big team is needed to develop high-quality games. While you’re at it, take a look at our thoughts about the “Thank You” update released back in December.

Since co-operating with your team mate is quite important in Orbitals, players will have access to a variety of weapons and tools, like the Scraphook, which can grab and move platforms to help your buddy jump across perilous pits. The Liquid Launcher, on the other hand, can be used to activate mechanisms and even cool down hot surfaces, allowing both of the protagonists, Maki and Omura, to create new ways forward. The Beam Cannon, on the other hand, is a destructive tool used for opening heat-activated doors and getting rid of obstacles.

The trailer also gave us a glimpse at some of the leisurely activities that both Maki and Omura can partake in, like discovering and befriending strange and adorable lifeforms, or hanging out at base and playing musical instruments. There will even be an arcade machine with its own co-op top-down shooter.

The story of Orbitals revolves around the destruction of a research station, and the consequences of this event 15 years later. Both Maki and Omura are survivors of the research station, and now must travel through the stars to ensure their survival against yet another cosmic storm that is brewing.

Orbitals is coming exclusively to Nintendo Switch 2 this Summer. It will support GameShare both locally as well as over the Internet. In order to use GameShare with a Switch, it has to be initiated by the Switch 2 player. It was originally unveiled back in December with a trailer.

It’s hardly surprising since the critically-acclaimed role-playing game swept The Game Awards and Golden Joystick Awards while being nominated for eight categories in the Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. That’s not counting the myriad of publications and websites that awarded it the same (although our top honors went to Death Stranding 2: On the Beach). Or the fact that it was disqualified from the Indie Game Awards due to the usage of generative AI, which the studio later clarified.

Following the “Thank You” update, Sandfall Interactive is seemingly moving on from Clair Obscur to its next project. Nothing is set in stone, and while the studio is certainly feeling the pressure to deliver, it wants to focus on “what we think is cool,” per lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen.

One thing that you can be sure of is that it won’t be bigger than Expedition 33. Creative director Guillaume Broche said it’s “good to have limitations” when being creative since “It’s the best way to be the best version of yourself.” Despite five million sales and counting, the team is also resisting the urge to scale up as Broche wants to focus on “making games” rather than managing.

When asked about whether the next game by Sandfall Interactive will be bigger than Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Broche gave a definitive answer: “No, I think it’s good to have limitations when you are creative.”

“It’s the best way to be the best version of yourself. We could scale up now we have a lot more money, but I would say it’s not tempting for us, because even the management team and myself, we’d have to be hands-on and doing things for ourselves. We love making games more than we love managing, so we want to keep doing that. These past five years were some of the best of my life, and I want to be happy like that again,” he said.

Guillermin noted that a small team allowed everyone to essentially know each other, which in turn helps with better communication in game development. He also spoke about how, with the success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the team now has a strong foundation to start building out its future projects, before noting that a large team isn’t really needed to make and ship high-quality games.

“In terms of team dynamics, everybody knows everybody in the team, and people are used to working together,” explained Guillermin. “Now we are lucky enough to have a strong foundation from the previous project, but expanding for the sake of expanding is not our vision.

“Our vision is to ship quality games, and we don’t believe you need to have a lot of people to do that. There are large teams that deliver great games, of course, but for us what works best is pretty much our current size. We don’t want to change the team structure and dynamic.”

Broche had previously spoken about how things at Sandfall Interactive wouldn’t really change much in light of the critical acclaim of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. He also confirmed at the time that the studio doesn’t have plans to grow its headcount.

“We don’t want to grow too much as a company,” he said. “We work well as we are now, as a small team, and we want to stay like that, because we are very happy, and why change?”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 came out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S last year, and since then has garnered near-universal praise and acclaim before going on to win several awards. The studio is currently working on its next project, and while it hasn’t revealed any details yet, COO and production director François Meurisse noted that the studio has been feeling “a bit of pressure”, and that it is working on “some great ideas we’re so excited to explore.”

For more on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, check out our review.

Speaking to Edge Magazine’s issue 419 (via GamesRadar), Nohra noted that players tend to partake in side content before they finish the main story of a given game. This is because finishing a game takes away a lot of the motivation to return for any side content, and this was something Nohra admitted to having underestimated.

“Often, people don’t want to finish the game, so they do all the side content before finishing it, because once the story is over, you’re usually less motivated to do the side content,” said Nohra. “And that’s something I underestimated, which made people that wanted a challenging end boss fight feel a bit disappointed. I don’t regret doing it the way we did it, but [we could have] had more explanation about your choice [in Act 3].”

Adding to Nohra’s sentiment, lead programmer Tom Guillermin said that the relatively low challenge level for the final boss in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 comes down to the fact that Sandfall Interactive didn’t expect the RPG to be so beloved that players would try and do all of the side content. Instead, the studio expected most players to focus on finishing the main story.

“We weren’t sure if our game was going to be that good,” said Guillermin. “And if it’s not, people may just want to see the story and go directly to the end of the story. So it was a surprise for us [that] people were doing every single thing there is to do in the game before going to the final dungeon. We’re happy about that, but we didn’t see it coming.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released back in April 2025 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and quickly went on to become a success with positive critical and commercial reception. The title would also go on to win several awards, including the Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025. You can check out more details about it in our review, as well as our thoughts on its “Thank You” update. In the meantime, Sandfall Interactive has started thinking about its next title, and studio COO François Meurisse has acknowledged the pressure that the studio is facing going forward.

“We’ll have time to get really focused into the next game,” said Meurisse. “We have some great ideas we’re so excited to explore, and we don’t start from the same point. The team already has five more years of experience. So maybe we can do some great stuff.”

Studio COO and production director François Meurisse is acutely aware of this, telling Edge magazine in issue 419 (transcription via GamesRadar) that he feels “a bit of pressure.” Nevertheless, “it’s not so important” for the developer.

“We’ll have time to get really focused into the next game. We have some great ideas we’re so excited to explore, and we don’t start from the same point. The team already has five more years of experience. So maybe we can do some great stuff.”

Lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen agreed, though she admitted to being “a bit of a people pleaser, so it’s always in the back of my mind that we have a lot of fans now, and they have certain expectations and certain feelings towards the game.” While she’d be “lying if I said that I didn’t think about that at all,” the studio is ultimately marching to the beat of its own drum.

“Creatively, we’ve always let our North Star be our own personal taste in terms of what we think is cool, what it is we enjoy and want to see. I’ve seen too many TV shows and books be swayed trying to please a lot of people, and in the process, you end up losing the heart of what’s there. So [we] feel like we need to trust our instincts and continue to trust the vision behind the studio.”

Of course, Sandfall Interactive has yet to reveal what its next project will be, whether it’s a sequel to Expedition 33 or something brand new. Creative director Guillaume Broche previously said that the studio would continue making “stories that move people” and games that are “really honest and true.” And despite the overwhelming success of Clair Obscur, you shouldn’t expect the studio to suddenly balloon in size (at least for now).

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. You can check out our review here, and our thoughts on its big free “Thank You” update, which adds a new area, Endless Tower bosses, and much more.

Along with ARC Raiders, games like Battlefield 6, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dispatch, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 were also among the top releases in the charts. Some older games could also be seen, with 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3, 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077, and 2013’s Grand Theft Auto 5 also being represented, albeit with its Enhanced Edition release.

Valve has also seen continued success with the Steam Deck, with SteamDB ranking the handheld gaming PC as the second-best-selling Steam item, just under ARC Raiders. Check out the list below.

Embark Studios itself hasn’t revealed recent sales data for ARC Raiders, rumours from back in November indicated that it was close to hitting 7 million sales just a month after its release.

ARC Raiders art director Robert Sammelin had recently spoken about Embark Studios’ plans to support the extraction shooter for “the longest time.” In an interview from last month, he noted that the studio has a 10-year plan and that as long as players continue to engage with the title, support will continue.

“Our ambition is to keep this game alive for the longest time. It is a live game,” said Sammelin. “It’s something that we want to keep alive for the longest time possible, as long as players engage with it and have fun and see that it is evolving in a good way.”

The art director also spoke about how the community of ARC Raiders plays a vital role in the game’s evolution, since a major reason for the extraction shooter’s success hinges on how players interact with each other.

“I think games like this will evolve depending on community behaviours, feedback, and how we pick out the things we see people engage really well with. But also throw things into the mix that sort of afford new challenges and opportunities within the game,” he explained.

“I think there’s a wide range of routes that we can take with this, and time will tell how we sort of dig into it. But we for sure have a pretty long-standing plan of where we want to take it.”

As part of the studio’s plans to support ARC Raiders, the Cold Snap update was released last month, bringing with it a new Winter-themed weather condition which also affects gameplay by prompting players to seek shelter (or die trying). It also affects visibility and movement, making some surfaces much more challenging to traverse.

ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. For more details, check out our review. Also check out our guide on all ARC machines and how you can beat them in battle.

Top ten best-sellers on Steam from December 23 to December 30:

1. ARC Raiders
2. Steam Deck
3. Battlefield 6
4. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
5. Baldur’s Gate 3
6. EA Sports FC 26
7. Dispatch
8. Cyberpunk 2077
9. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
10. Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced

“Yeah, we’re aware of what’s been going on with [Divinity director Swen Vincke’s statements about AI use],” explained Broche in response to a question about the studio’s use of generative AI and how it will be used in the future. “But I can say, everything in the game is human made. When AI first really came out in 2022, we’d already started on the game. It was just a new tool, we tried it, and we didn’t like it at all. It felt wrong. We had originally used it as a placeholder for textures we missed, but we took it out as soon as we found it.”

“But yeah, the concept art, voice actors, everything is human made. It’s pretty hard what the future [of the industry] will look like, but everything will be made by humans from us.”

Broche was referring to Larian Studios’ Swen Vincke’s statements about the use of generative AI at the studio from earlier this month. His statements about how generative AI was being used to “explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text,” drew quite a bit of controversy among fans of Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2, who noted that using it in concept art would taint the rest of the art that was built on top for the game.

This criticism had prompted Vincke to issue another statement later where he spoke about how the tools were working as “additive” to the talents of the creative teams rather than generative AI serving as replacements to artists themselves.

“We are neither releasing a game with any AI components, nor are we looking at trimming down teams to replace them with AI. While I understand it’s a subject that invokes a lot of emotion, it’s something we are constantly discussing internally through the lens of making everyone’s working day better, not worse,” said Vincke.

The use of generative AI in the gaming industry has been a hot-button issue for a while, but discussions have largely picked up over the previous month, with Warhorse Studios’ Daniel Vávra writing his own lengthy statement about how the world should stop resisting the rise and proliferation of generative AI. In his statement, he noted that “AI is here to stay with us.”

“As frightening as it may be, that’s the way it is,” he continued. “Personally, it scares me the most in the music because you can’t even recognise AI there anymore.”

Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima also spoke about AI, and how we can’t go back to a world without it, comparing the technology to smartphones.

The use of AI was specifically noted as being leftover placeholder assets that were being used internally, and that the studio had missed out on replacing it with real artwork made by artists. As caught by IGN, studio co-founder and producer François Meurisse discussed the use of AI in an interview with El País all the way back in July.

“We use some AI, but not much. The key is that we were very clear about what we wanted to do and what to invest in. And, of course, technology has allowed us to do things that were unthinkable a short time ago. Unreal Engine 5’s tools and assets have been very important in improving the graphics, gameplay, and cinematics,” said Muerisse at the time.

As for the Indie Game Awards, a statement by its judges noted that there is a strict stance regarding the use of generative AI in place. In keeping with this, Sandfall Interactive had also failed to disclose the use of generative AI in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. As a result of this, the title has been stripped of the two awards it had won at the event: Game of the Year and Debut game.

“The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself,” said the Indie Game Awards in a statement. “When it was submitted for consideration, a representative of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards.”

With this statement having caused Meurisse’s statements to resurface when discussing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, El País has also updated its original article to include a statement from the studio. In this statement, the studio noted that it had “used a limited number of pre-existing assets, notably 3D assets sourced from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. None of these assets were created using artificial intelligence.”

“Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative Al-created assets in the game,” continues the statement. “When the first Al tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within five days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process.”

For more discussions on generative AI and its uses in game development, check out what has been said by veterans of the industry: Divinity director Swen Vincke, Kingdom Come: Deliverance director Daniel Vávra, and Metal Gear Solid series creator Hideo Kojima.

Liang got this advice from the studio right after The Game Awards 2025, where the developer had walked away with many awards, including Game of the Year, for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “Pressure is good,” Liang said. “I talked with the team behind Expedition 33, they had a lot of trophies last night.” As for approaching Sandfall Interactive for advice, he said, “One of the most important and interesting things [Sandfall Interactive] told us was that for the last nine months, the most important thing is to delete things. To cut things [from the game] and to polish the rest.”

He went on to refer to this as being “a good idea,” and that “I will take that advice.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche had spoken about keeping the scope of the game narrow, and how it helped development as well as in garnering a positive critical reception on launch. He spoke about this when he was asked back in October how development on the game would have been affected if the studio had unlimited resources.

“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!”

The studio’s COO François Meurisse and publisher Kepler Interactive’s portfolio director Matthew Handrahan had also spoken about how the lack of padding in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 helped to make it a successful release.

“One of the things that’s great about Expedition 33 is it really respects the player’s time,” said Hadrahan. “It gives them plenty to do, and it gives them plenty of satisfaction, but it isn’t arbitrarily 500 hours of gameplay. It’s impactful because it’s scoped correctly. […] It doesn’t have any sense of bloat or extraneous things that are put there just to make it larger and larger and larger.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this month. Check out our review for more details. In the meantime, also check out the release date trailer for Phantom Blade Zero, which is coming to PC and PS5 on September 9. Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox Series X/S players will unfortunately have to wait for at least 12 months after release to play the upcoming game, however.