After months of teasing and over an hour-long demo, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched on Thursday, April 24, 2025. In just over 24 hours of its launch, the game has become a massive hit and has crushed several records. This is an impressive feat for a studio’s first release.
The turn-based RPG is widely praised for its impressive storytelling. Also, the voice actors are receiving accolades from gamers for a phenomenal job. All these have propelled Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to become the highest-rated game of 2025, yet.
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A trip to Metacritic and you will quickly see that the game has earned an average Metascore of 93 on Xbox Series X, 92 on PS5, and 90 on PC, which puts it ahead of every other game release so far in 2025. According to Metacritic’s rating, those numbers mean Expedition 33 is a “Must-Play” and a Universal Acclaim.
The turn-based element of the game means it takes around 30 hours to beat, while completionists will need to invest twice that number. Expedition 33’s score ties with that of Blue Prince. However, the latter got its score from fewer reviews compared to Expedition 33. Perhaps that is why Expedition 33 has been ranked above Blue Prince.
On OpenCritic, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the undisputed king with a score of 91/100. Split Fiction and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 are tied in the second position with a 90/100 score each. There are still lots of great titles lined up for 2025, including GTA 6.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sales milestone announced
In just 24 hours after release, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sold over 500,000 copies, which the developer Sandfall Interactive said on social media is “a milestone for us, reached sooner than we’d ever imagined”. For a game developed by a team of just over 30 (mostly ex-Ubisoft devs), the milestone is pretty impressive.
A milestone for us, reached sooner than we'd ever imagined.
Thank you all. pic.twitter.com/cZrghh1K3m
— Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (@expedition33) April 25, 2025
A lot of people have already started doing the math. Mike Straw of Insider Gaming calculated the developer’s revenue at $50 per unit to be roughly $25 million. However, that’s an oversimplification considering the fact that platform fees were not accounted for.
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Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation take a 30% cut of game sales. On Steam, the commission is reduced to 25% for games that have earned over $10 million and 20% for those that have earned over $50 million. Unfortunately, there is no breakdown of sales based on platform to properly calculate the studio’s revenue. Therefore, our projection is that Sandfall’s revenue is still behind that projection.
Talking about Steam, the game raked in 98,591 concurrent players 24 hours after launch, and we anticipate that number will cross 100,000 this weekend. Many are already pitching Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a GOTY contender. However, we think it’s still too early to say.
