Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 continues to be on a roll, and its hot streak isn’t going anywhere. After selling one million copies in its first three days of launch, the role-playing game (RPG) has hit the two-million milestone 12 days in — a feat made even more impressive with its debut title status.
“We’ve watched in awe as so many of you began your journey. Feeling every step, every emotion, every revelation alongside you,” reads the announcement post on X/Twitter. “To those just joining us: welcome. Tomorrow comes.”
The showing is the latest in a series of achievements from developer Sandfall Interactive, including an all-time peak of 145,063 concurrent players on Steam, surpassing its previous record of 121,422, a 9.7 user score on Metacritic, the highest rating of 2025 thus far, and public recognition from French president Emmanuel Macron.
While there were initial concerns that it’d be overshadowed by The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, which Bethesda shadow-dropped two days prior, publisher Kepler Interactive said the near back-to-back releases helped to stir excitement for the RPG genre, and in turn, benefited Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
“We always knew that Expedition 33 had a very specific identity. When I was in the press, I saw the Western-style RPG and the Japanese-style RPG as having quite different appeals and audiences,” portfolio manager Matt Handrahan told The Game Business. I knew plenty of people that would play an Elder Scrolls game that wouldn’t necessarily play Final Fantasy and vice versa.”
He added: “Also, by the time that we rolled around, we had momentum of our own and we felt pretty confident that we could stand beside it. I think there were other aspects, like the price point we were at and the inclusion in Game Pass. So we knew we would have a lot of interest around the game. We were confident in that. And it went as well as it possibly could have done in our eyes. And, actually, proximity to Oblivion didn’t seem to harm us at all. In many ways, I think it just drew attention to quality RPGs that week and everybody was thinking and talking about the genre.”
It turned out to be a worthy gamble, as this humble passion project from a core team of around 30 developers has flipped the rhetoric of triple-A and heavyweight titles and the definition of success on its head. Indeed, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a rare success story for the ages with asinine beginnings — speaking to BBC, studio founder Guillaume Broche revealed that he was
“bored” in his previous job at Ubisoft, found composer Lorien Testard, who had never worked on a video game before, on the music-sharing website Soundcloud, and gathered a whole team of junior developers.
Led by a stacked voice cast that includes Charlie Cox (Daredevil), Jennifer English (Baldur’s Gate 3), Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings), Ben Starr (Final Fantasy XVI), Kirsty Rider (The Sandman), Shala Nyx (The Old Guard) and more, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 follows a group of Expeditioners who have set out to destroy an entity called the Paintress, who paints a number on a monolith every year that dooms everyone of that age to death.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Kevin Low
