Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the debut project of the Montpellier-based studio Sandfall Interactive, a 60-person team founded in 2020 by several veterans of Ubisoft, EA and independent French outfits. Announced during the June 2024 Xbox Games Showcase, the game is planned for release in 2025 on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (Microsoft Store / Steam) and will launch into Xbox Game Pass on day one. Although Sandfall has not ruled out additional platforms, only the Xbox–PC line-up is official at the time of writing. The project is being built in Unreal Engine 5, and the trailer highlights extensive use of Nanite geometry, Lumen global illumination and high-density character shaders to achieve a painterly yet physically grounded aesthetic. Narrative premise Every year at midnight a mysterious immortal artist known simply as the Paintress awakens, paints a single number onto an enormous canvas, and by dawn every person of that age dies and turns to ash. After thirty-two such “paintings,” the remaining survivors know their time is nearly up: the next number will be thirty-three. A resistance band calling itself Expedition 33 therefore decides to embark on a desperate journey to reach the Paintress’s tower, challenge her, and break the cycle before their allotted dawn arrives. The story mixes high fantasy with Belle Époque France—iron lattice towers, art-nouveau façades, brass telescopes, velvet-lined airships—while the Paintress’s canvases leak surreal dreamscapes and living brushstrokes into the world. Themes of fatalism, collective memory, and the power of art to both create and destroy are central to the script, which Sandfall says is fully voiced in English and French and features performance capture for the principal cast. World design and exploration Clair Obscur’s environments draw heavily on late-19th-century French architecture and iconography—gaslit boulevards, rose-tinted conservatories, seaside funiculars—then distort them with impossible geometry and floating paint droplets whenever the Paintress’s influence intensifies. Exploration is fully third-person and free-camera; players can sprint, mantle, shimmy along ledges, zip-line between rooftops and solve light traversal puzzles that hinge on manipulating giant paint mechanisms (e.g., rotating a color wheel to solidify certain brush-stroke platforms). Side quests from grieving families, shell-shocked soldiers and eccentric inventors flesh out the setting, and every region contains optional “Color Fractures,” self-contained dungeons whose rules are warped by a single dominant hue. Party and characters The game revolves around a fixed cast of five Expedition 33 members; three are active in battle while the rest stay in reserve and can be swapped at campfires or mid-combat with special abilities. So far Sandfall has introduced: • Gustave – leader and former captain of the city guard; a spear fighter who can counter-lunge when players time a parry just as an enemy weapon flashes. • Maëlle – orphan turned crack shot; wields a crank-crossbow that doubles as a grappling hook during exploration. • Jules – towering blacksmith with a war-hammer; specializes in stagger and terrain deformation skills. • Ilsa – prodigy chemist harnessing volatile “vermilion tonics” that act as both healing mists and explosive flasks. • Marianne – ex-chorister whose rifle fires crystalline rounds that ricochet, allowing trick-shot puzzles and multipliers. Character progression merges classic JRPG stats (HP, attack, defense, magic) with a board of “pigment slots.” Defeating enemies yields raw pigments—cobalt, ochre, magenta, etc.—that can be socketed to unlock passive effects or combined to craft signature techniques. These pigments also tint the fighters’ capes and particle trails, providing a subtle visual record of each build path. Combat system Sandfall markets Expedition 33 as a “turn-based RPG with real-time intent.” Encounters initiate seamlessly in the overworld. On a given turn, the selected hero launches an ability, but players then perform a short, skill-checking action to determine effectiveness: • Melee strikes ask for timed button presses similar to the perfect-attack rings in Paper Mario or Yakuza Like a Dragon. • Projectile-based talents shift to an over-the-shoulder angle where players manually aim within a few-second window. • Defensive turns let the whole party free-move inside a small arena to intercept or evade telegraphed enemy blows; a last-moment dodge negates all damage. • Spell-like abilities demand a quick tracing of magical sigils with the analog stick or mouse, and any mistakes diminish potency.