“It’s OK to make a small game,” said Astro Bot director Nicolas Doucet at this year’s GDC. For many, Astro Bot was 2024’s Game of the Year, a game that may have been made by a PlayStation-owned studio, but according to Doucet was based on smart AA-sized ambition.
“A lot of choices we made with Astro Bot could be labelled as AA… like the size of the team, the size of the game, there’s no voice, it’s not open world, but that doesn’t really matter,” he said. “We could still make something that gets people really happy.”
In some ways, he could very well be describing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Sandfall Interactive has, a year later, proven once again that small games can be critically successful and find their audience.
Of course, “small” is a relative term, and it relates to the size of the team as well as the game itself. There was plenty of discussion this year about the number of developers who worked on Expedition 33 (a core group of 30, but with outside help) and whether it should even be labelled as an indie game from an indie studio, considering the support from publisher Kepler and investment from Microsoft.
When I spoke with the game’s director Guillaume Broche, he described the studio to me as a “small art house, where we make games that we love and want to play”. The core of the game was initially Broche’s singular vision that was maintained throughout development. What’s more, the JRPG style of the game lent itself to a manageable scope; said Broche: “the kind of game I really love, they tend to take a lot of shortcuts – like JRPGs – and so the general game also matches very well with the size of the team. We would have struggled a lot more, of course, if we’d done a big open world with thousands of quests.”
Size-wise, Expedition 33 pales in comparison to its RPG contemporaries – Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, as one example – yet this was intentional. It may not include tonnes of puzzles or dungeons or minigames, but when the team tried this it “broke the rhythm that we want for the game and made it less tight,” said Broche. “I think it would have been great for the length of the game, because people would have been stuck for hours. But overall, we wanted something that is shorter than traditional RPGs and more packed in terms of rhythm and cutscenes and story and the battles.”
This tight focus, I think, is ultimately the game’s strength. There’s lots to like in Expedition 33, from its surreal painterly aesthetics, to its now award-winning performances, and its musical score fusing classical styles with pounding synths and French flair. But combat is at its heart – part turn-based, part rhythm game – and by paring down the overall scope of the game, it allowed Sandfall to focus on its strengths.
The result is best-in-genre combat with a tonne of depth, not just in party makeup and the varied playstyles of its cast, but the wealth of options for ability and buff customisation with the Pictos system. At its core, Expedition 33 is a game for RPG nerds who love spending hours tinkering away on builds, before parrying with perfect timing in an extravagant display of empowerment. Combat is your primary way of interacting with the game’s world, but it’s strong enough to carry the whole experience.
Altogether, Expedition 33 is an impressive game in itself, worthy of the praise it’s received all year. But it also represents a hopeful future for the industry. Where AAA studios are chasing trends with big teams and big budgets, inevitably stumbling into banality in an effort to appease the masses, resulting in layoffs and live-service failures, Expedition 33 by contrast has a clear sense of direction, a bold, distinct vision, and a whole load of passion.
Indeed, it’s clear Broche and the development team are as passionate about the wider genre as they are their own game. He described Xbox 360 exclusive Lost Odyssey as “the last game that made me cry”, while fans of Expedition 33 have already spotted plenty of references to JRPGs past and present in both the base game and its new expansion. And while there are of course plenty of passionate developers out there, Broche’s openness about his love of the genre has absolutely struck a chord with audiences.
It reminded me of Larian CEO Swen Vincke at 2024’s The Game Awards before presenting Astro Bot with the top prize. “The studio made their game because they wanted to make a game that they wanted to play themselves,” said Vincke in his speech, describing the magic formula for a winning game. It wouldn’t treat its developers or its players as numbers to exploit, and it wouldn’t be made to increase market share. It would, essentially, be a game made from passionate creativity. “Above all they cared about their game,” said Vincke, “because they love games. It’s really that simple.”
His prediction was proven absolutely correct when Expedition 33 won this year’s award. A small team, a focused vision, and a passion for the craft of video game development. The success of the game has proven this is what players respond to. Let’s hope it’s a positive indication of the direction the industry is heading.
This article is part of our end-of-year series, Games of 2025, where we talk about great moments, great games, and our personal favourites of the year. You can read more in our Games of 2025 hub. Thank you for reading, and happy holidays!
