Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been one among 2025’s greatest successes up to now, and it is now offered more than 3.3 million copies. What contributed to the sport’s large success? Little doubt quite a few elements, together with its lower cost and smaller scope, based on writer Kepler Interactive.
Kepler’s Matthew Handrahan instructed GI.biz that Expedition 33 “actually respects the participant’s time;” it is not a recreation that gives dimension for the sake of dimension. “It provides them a lot to do, and it provides them loads of satisfaction, but it surely is not arbitrarily 500 hours of gameplay,” he stated. “It is impactful as a result of it is scoped appropriately. […] It would not have any sense of bloat or extraneous issues which are put there simply to make it bigger and bigger and bigger.”
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Handrahan went on to say he believes “brevity must be extra of a advantage in gaming,” including that “one thing will be higher by being shorter.”
What he is saying sounds much like what 2K stated about Mafia: The Previous Nation, which is a $50 linear recreation that does not require a “huge time dedication.” 2K has stated it believes there’s an viewers for simply such a recreation, and Expedition 33’s gross sales outcomes to this point could lend credence to that risk.
Additionally within the interview, Handrahan reacted to rising costs in gaming, saying Expedition 33’s $50 worth level might need helped the sport attain extra individuals. As the value of AAA video games goes up and up, it creates a possibility for “sensibly scoped video games” within the $40-$50 vary, he stated.
“I do not suppose anybody that performed Expedition 33 would suppose they did not get their cash’s value out of that,” he stated. When the $50 worth was introduced, the corporate bought backlash on-line, Sandfall COO and producer François Meurisse stated, as a result of individuals feared Expedition 33 is perhaps a 12-hour recreation with “unfinished content material.”
“However ultimately we caught with the value, we doubled down on it, [and] we supplied some context about the truth that it wasn’t a AAA,” the developer stated. “In the long run, it was a win-win state of affairs, as a result of it was a method to appeal to extra gamers in direction of the sport, to have good participant satisfaction about their shopping for [decision], and it may truly find yourself doing extra gross sales. So perhaps gamers’ notion can change a bit about that type of worth [point].”
Expedition 33 additionally launched into the Game Cross library–the similar week as Oblivion Remastered–and some theorized that this might need negatively impacted the variety of copies offered outright. Kepler rejected that concept, although, saying launching close to Oblivion Remastered did not appear to harm “in any respect.”
Different builders have admitted that launching into Game Cross may cannibalize recreation gross sales, however any potential losses might be mitigated by a cost from Microsoft to launch on Game Cross. The enterprise specifics of any such deal between Microsoft and Kepler for Expedition 33 are unknown.
Given the large success of Expedition 33 to this point, many are questioning if Sandfall will launch any DLC or expansions for the sport, however nothing has been introduced. The studio is, nonetheless, gearing up for its subsequent recreation.