Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, indie game top of Metacritic's 2025 review list
Independent French studio Sandfall Interactive's first video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, only launched worldwide on April 24 but has already built up a solid community of fans eager to discover its post-apocalyptic fantasy world.
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According to Metacritic, which aggregates video game reviews, the turn-based role-playing game had a 92 out of 100 'universal acclaim' score based on critic reviews – the joint-highest so far this year.
One of the studio's three co-founders said the high numbers – rare for a game developed by an independent studio – were 'extremely encouraging'.
'We are coming to the end of four years of production and even longer for some of us,' Francois Meurisse said a few days before the game's release. 'We're now at a crucial moment.'
Sandfall Interactive's 20 or so employees sit serenely behind a bank of screens on the first floor of an art-deco-style mansion in the southern French coastal city of Montpellier, where the company was set up in 2020.
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