Clair Obscur lead crosses fingers
- Sandfall Interactive co-founder Tom Guillermin said he was “crossing fingers” that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 would lose some GOTY races to stranger games. - Guillermin made the remark while reflecting on the RPG’s awards run after it won the Game Developers Choice Award for GOTY. - The comment matters because Expedition 33 became a breakout debut hit, showing weird mid-budget RPGs can win both players and judges.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the kind of RPG that usually gets praised as a surprise hit, then politely moved aside when awards season gets serious. But that is not what happened. The game kept winning, and now one of its leads is saying he was actually hoping some of those trophies would go elsewhere. That sounds odd at first — but it tells you a lot about how Sandfall Interactive sees both its own game and the industry around it. (tech.yahoo.com) ### Who said this? Tom Guillermin — Sandfall Interactive co-founder and Clair Obscur’s chief technical officer — is the person behind the quote making the rounds. In comments published May 6, he said he was “crossing fingers” that the game would not take Game of the Year everywhere, because he wanted other “super creative” and “weird” games to get their moment too. (tech.yahoo.com) ### Was he putting down his own game? Not really. The point was almost the opposite. Guillermin was describing a healthy games business — one where a stylish, turn-based RPG from a new studio can break through, but where unusual games that are even smaller or stranger still have room to be celebrated. Basically, he was arguing against a winner-take-all awards culture, not against Expedition 33 itself. (tech.yahoo.com) ### Why does that line hit so hard? Because Clair Obscur was not some tiny critical darling that vanished after launch. It became both a major review success and a real awards contender. Metacritic still shows it at a 92 critic score, which put it in the top tier of 2025 releases, and that gave the game a very different aura from the usual “good first effort” framing debut studios get. (metacritic.com) ### What had the game already won? By the time Guillermin was reflecting on all this, Expedition 33 had already won Game of the Year at the Game Developers Choice Awards. It also picked up Best Audio, Best Debut, Best Narrative, and Best Visual Art there. The same interview notes that it later won BAFTA’s Best Game as well, which is why the quote lands less(metacritic.com)gger than expected. (tech.yahoo.com) ### Why is “Best Debut” part of the story? That is the interesting bit. Guillermin pointed to the weird dual status of the game — competing as both a first game from a new studio and as one of the year’s very best games, full stop. Usually those are different lanes. A debut project is supposed to show promise. A Game of the Year wi(tech.yahoo.com)ons. Expedition 33 collapsed that gap. (tech.yahoo.com) ### So what is he really saying about the industry? He seems to be saying that players are more open than publishers often assume. Sandfall started out making a turn-based JRPG-style game in a market where plenty of people would have said that format was niche or out of fashion. Then the game connected anyway. For Guillermin, that is proof that audiences will reward risk if the result feels distinctive enough. (tech.yahoo.com) ### Why are people talking about this now? Because the quote reframes Clair Obscur’s success. The easy version of the story is sales, review scores, trophies. But this comment turns it into something broader — a case for ambitious mid-budget games that do not look like safe blockbuster bets. That is why one offhand line about “cros(tech.yahoo.com)ting funded. (tech.yahoo.com) ### Bottom line The news is not that a developer said something self-effacing. The news is that a breakout RPG lead used his own awards momentum to make the case for stranger games. And turns out that is exactly why Clair Obscur has become such a useful symbol in the first place. (tech.yahoo.com)
