The Studio: 30 People, One Dream

Sandfall Interactive is based in Montpellier, France. Its founder, Guillaume Broche, was a Ubisoft employee who left the company in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic to pursue a dream he had been developing since 2019 — a high-fidelity, AAA-quality turn-based RPG inspired by the Japanese games that shaped his childhood. Final Fantasy. Persona. The stories that define what a certain generation understands as the peak of the medium.

He assembled a core team of approximately 30 developers. Most were industry veterans. All of them shared the same conviction: that the big-budget, artistically expressive turn-based RPG was a genre that major studios had abandoned — and that someone needed to revive it properly.

What Sandfall built in five years with that team is something that studios ten times their size struggle to match. The developers were knighted under the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in February 2026. The mayor of Montpellier called it "a reference in the international history of video games." The French president personally congratulated the studio twice.

None of that is hyperbole. All of it is deserved.

The World: Belle Époque France, Painted in Death

Clair Obscur is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Belle Époque France — the lavish, artistic, culturally explosive period at the turn of the 20th century. The city of Lumière exists under an annual, inescapable curse.

Once a year, a mysterious entity known as the Paintress wakes atop a distant monolith and paints a number. And everyone in the world who has reached that age — or exceeded it — dissolves into smoke and fades away, as beautifully and terribly as a painting washing away in the rain. Each year, the number ticks lower. When the game begins, she is about to paint 33.

Tomorrow she will paint. And tomorrow, Expedition 33 will depart — the latest in a long line of doomed expeditions to destroy the Paintress, so that she can never paint death again.

That premise alone is one of the most conceptually striking in RPG history. And the game uses it to devastating effect, building a world where every character knows their time is borrowed, every relationship is defined by impending loss, and every act of courage is simultaneously an act of grief.

The Combat: Turn-Based and Real-Time, Perfectly Balanced

Clair Obscur's combat system is the mechanical heart of everything, and it is a genuine evolution of the turn-based RPG format rather than a departure from it.

On the surface, it is turn-based — characters take turns selecting attacks, abilities, and items in the tradition of Final Fantasy and Persona. But layered on top of that structure is a real-time dimension that changes everything. Dodge, parry, and counter in real time during enemy attacks. Chain combos by mastering attack rhythms. Target enemy weak points using a free-aim system that demands attention and precision even during your own turn.

Missing a dodge sends you reeling. Landing a perfect parry turns the entire momentum of a fight. The tension of watching an enemy wind up for a devastating attack — knowing you have milliseconds to react — creates a kind of focus and engagement that purely turn-based games simply cannot replicate.

The result is something that reviewers struggled to describe with a single comparison. "Paper Mario-style timing elements." "Strategic dance of a Soulslike." "Turn-based combat reborn." All of these are accurate. None of them are sufficient.

Character building adds another layer: Pictos (character abilities), unique attributes, and Luminas (passive abilities shareable between characters) allow for deep, synergistic build crafting that rewards experimentation and rewards mastery of the system.

The Cast: Andy Serkis, Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Ben Starr

Sandfall invested heavily in performance capture and voice acting, hiring a cast that would not be out of place in a major film production. Andy Serkis (Gollum, Caesar, Alfred Pennyworth). Charlie Cox (Daredevil, Matt Murdock). Jennifer English (Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3). Ben Starr (Clive in Final Fantasy XVI). Each character is fully realized — their relationships, tragedies, and small moments of joy rendered with a sincerity and technical sophistication that makes them feel genuinely alive.

Maelle's performance in particular has been singled out by reviewers as delivering "raw, aching sincerity" that carries the emotional weight of the game's most devastating moments.

The Numbers That Tell the Story

5 million copies sold by October 2025. 96% Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam. 92/100 on OpenCritic with 98% of critics recommending. 9 Game Awards wins including Game of the Year. Highest Metacritic user score of all time. Ranked #1 on year-end lists by IGN, GameSpot, Game Informer, GamesRadar, Time, Rolling Stone, Empire, Associated Press, Esquire, TechRadar, and Destructoid.

Conclusion

If you have not played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, this article is the only reminder you should need. It is the best RPG in years — perhaps the best in over a decade — from a studio of 30 people who believed in something and built it with everything they had.

The Paintress is waiting. Expedition 33 departs at dawn. And those who came before left journals so that you would know what faces you.

For those who come after.