A French-made game, heavily inspired by the country’s Belle Epoque (1871-1914) period and featuring a score and story as melodramatic as a night at a Paris opera house, has set records as 2025’s game of the year — and it wouldn’t have happened without Japan.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 released in relative, well, obscurity in April this year. But it wasn’t long before the game developed by Sandfall Interactive, based in Montpellier, France, was being talked about as one of the year’s best. The game’s small pleasures — turn-based combat accented by real-time defensive parries and offensive attack boosts — and grand entertainment — a baroque, fatalistic story of ragtag adventurers fighting a seemingly impossible foe to save what remains of their declining world — combined for a uniquely polished and compelling experience no other game topped this year.
Major gaming award events agree. In November, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took home seven trophies at the London-based Golden Joystick Awards (tied with 2020’s The Last of Us Part II for the most in the award’s history), including accolades for best soundtrack, best storytelling and game of the year. On Dec. 11, it was the Los Angeles-based The Game Awards’ turn to shower praise; Sandfall Interactive walked away with nine awards (including best art direction, best performance [by voice actor Jennifer English in the role of orphaned protagonist Maelle] and game of the year), again setting a new record in the show’s history.
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