Coming out of nowhere, from a team of 30 people from Montpellier, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 easily sailed to the top of the highest-rated games of this year and the past few years. The game was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S and has performed really well on all fronts, selling over 2 million copies since its release on April 24th. This is great news for Sandfall Interactive, which is a brand-new studio, and this is their very first game.
Often, it takes a long time for a studio to settle into their creative vision and understand what makes games special. However, this amazing team of developers has instantly hit their stride, and clearly the rest of the world is responding to their creative spirit and what they were able to pull together here.
Everything you need to know about the game before starting can be seen from the trailers. We won’t discuss the story here if you are worried about spoilers.
Below, you can find out why we here at News Snap think it’s the best game of 2025 and how you can get a copy.
Affordably Priced – Why Clair Obscur Expedition 33’s Price Point Is Incredible
Most of the games that come out nowadays are usually priced in the £55-£70 range, depending on which publisher, what console it is and also if it has microtransactions and downloadable content on top. However, this game has none of those and is also priced at an affordable £41.99 on Steam, and £44.99 on both PS5 and Xbox X/S, while also being available on Xbox Game Pass.
The situation this game finds itself in is similar to Baldur’s Gate 3, released by Larian Studios in 2023, which ended up winning Game Of The Year at The Game Awards. Both were produced by studios which are relatively indie and managed to get really talented people involved in order to create something spectacular. And the audiences are receptive to it! Who would’ve guessed that prioritising quality gameplay, storytelling, and not chasing the dollar would lead to creating a masterpiece.
Clair Obscur Found Their Composer… On Soundcloud? Behind The Music
The soundtrack created by Lorien Testard is absolutely mindblowing and eclectic, with many different instruments being used throughout. His choices of percussion and orchestral music enhance every single part of the story and atmosphere of this expansive world. Quite literally, in some cases as there are multiple world map tracks that will play depending on where you are in the story. However, the most curious part is how they were able to find Lorien.
When searching for a composer for the game, the team searched far and wide until stumbling on a person on a gaming forum who was sharing their compositions. Instantly, the director of the game was blown away by his Soundcloud and brought in Lorien to work on the soundtrack for Expedition 33. Which, personally, I believe to have been an amazing choice as his songs really tie the themes of the game together to the canvas that is the story of this game.
Unreal Engine 5 – Artstyle And Graphical Fidelity in Lumière
Despite being a more budget title, the game was made using Unreal Engine 5. This is currently the standard for a lot of modern game development and it honestly makes the games look great. With its Lumen lightning system and Nanite mesh technology it allows games to present themselves visually at a very high level of fidelity. However we should never take away from the individual achievements of the artists that put these immaculate levels together.
In Expedition 33 you will go through many different biomes and lands, with each one being curated to perfection from the ground up. It was as if a painting was brought to life, from the very beginning in Lumière all the way to the end of the game, the art style is absolutely mindblowing. Combined with the music there are some places in the game where you can just leave it running and sit there enjoying the ambience and the scenery in front of you.
Daredevil, Shadowheart, Clive and Gollum – The Spectacular Voice Cast
Despite being a first attempt at making a game by Sandfall Interactive they did not spare any mind in auditioning some of the best in the business. Daredevil’s Charlie Cox plays Gustave, Andy Serkis famous for playing Gollum and Caesar in Lord Of The Rings and the new The Planet Of The Apes films respectively plays Renoir. Verso, played by Ben Starr who previously was Clive in Final Fantasy 16, which ended up losing out on Game Of The Year in 2023 to Baldur’s Gate 3. Funnily enough his co-star is Jennifer English who played Shadowheart in Baldur’s Gate and delivers a heartfelt performance as Maelle in Clair Obscur.
Each of these actors delivers an amazing performance, and what is more amazing is that they weren’t capturing their motion as all of that was done by the French team. Yet the characters all feel alive and natural despite that, the team worked really hard to make sure that the script is perfect. This allows the talent to pour out from the actors and elevates the story to another level of quality.
The Reception To Clair Obscur – Expedition 33
The day the game came out it was already the highest rated game of the entire year. On Metacritic the critic score currently sits at 92 on PS5, 91 on PC and 91 on Xbox X/S with of course 100 being the highest. However curiously the User Score which is often much more polarising is even higher at 9.7 (out of 10) which is unprecedented. Baldur’s Gate 3 for example despite having a 96 critic score only has a user score of 9.2.
In its first day the game sold over 500k copies, then in its first week it launched easily past a million and now in the third week we are sitting at over 2 million. We can see this game keep growing and will update this statistic as we know more. With the lower price tag we predict this number to keep growing but not more than the Oblivion Remaster that came out in the same week.
Will Expedition 33 Get Game Of The Year?
The Game Awards are always at the very end of the year in the second week of December, which leaves 7 months for this to change. However it is unlikely that a game will come out that will be more critically acclaimed any time soon. Recently Grand Theft Auto 6 got pushed back to 2026, which means that there isn’t a lot of direct competition. There are a couple games coming up which may dethrone it but currently this is the most likely pick for the winner.
If you’d like to see more gaming news, check out that section on the website where we will be going into more of the upcoming releases and covering them.
