“Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” has been crowned the best game of 2025. This astonishing success came as a complete surprise to the young studio Sandfall Interactive, as it was never anticipated. The French turn-based RPG, crafted in the style of Japanese role-playing games, achieved phenomenal scores: 92 out of 100 from critics and an average user rating of 9.5/10 on Metacritic, solidifying its place as the highest-rated game in the service’s history.
In an interview, François Merisse, co-founder of Sandfall Interactive, revealed that his team initially aimed for a maximum score of 85. Furthermore, trial reviews conducted approximately six months before the official release suggested scores closer to 80.
Merisse elaborated: “We conducted several trial reviews six months to a year before release, and we received expected scores around 80. By the end of production, our official goal was to achieve 85 points on Metacritic. In the final months, we invested significant additional effort to enhance quality. We were aiming for 85, but surpassing the 90-point threshold truly became an excellent reward for the team.”
He further added, reflecting on his approach: “Part of my job is always to ‘plan for the worst and hope for the best,’ so I didn’t allow myself to hope too much. A significant part of this involves managing the team’s expectations, so the entire production group brainstormed numerous terrible scenarios that could go wrong. But it was all worth it, as we definitely exceeded our expectations.”
Art Director Nicolas Maxon-Francom corroborated this sentiment, confirming that the development team was prepared for the game to remain a niche project, not necessarily achieving widespread mainstream appeal.
Maxon-Francom elaborated: “I think most of us were aiming for around 80. We believed it was a perfectly respectable game. We were proud of what we had made, and even if sales were low, we would have been happy.”