Tonight, Expedition 33 is very likely to be crowned Game of the Year, and it has cost surprisingly little

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 captivates countless players with its story, music and combat system. At the Game Awards, the RPG garnered nearly every conceivable nomination, even though it surprisingly cost very little.

This is what Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is about: The action RPG was early on considered a contender for one of the best games of the year, if not the Game of the Year. Even MeinMMO editor Jasmin was impressed by the game, which is not only due to the phenomenal story but also the challenging battles.

Now, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has received 12 nominations at the Game Awards (a record!), which take place tonight at 2:00 AM CET. There, developers as well as outstanding games are honored for their achievements. You can find all nominations for the Game Awards in our overview.

In an interview, Guillaume Broche, developer and founder of “Sandfall Interactive,” reveals how high the budget of the RPG really was – and it is remarkably low.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 hinterlässt bei den Spielern eine Leere

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How low was the budget? According to a conversation with the New York Times, Expedition 33 cost less than 10 million dollars (about 8.5 million Euros). And yet, the RPG has risen to one of the best games of all time, surprising the team itself.

By comparison: 10 million dollars would be …

• one and a half times the development cost of Palworld, which according to Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe cost about 1 billion yen, roughly 7 million dollars.
• one-sixth of the budget of Ghost of Tsushima, which was at 60 million dollars (Source: wikipedia.org)
• approximately the price of 21 1-minute trailers at the Game Awards (Source: kitguru.net).

To save costs, the team deliberately decided against an open world and instead opted for classic RPG structures. This means: level-based areas resembling corridors and turn-based battles, for which characters are teleported to arenas. Thus, not every corner of the world had to be built in detail, yet the feeling of vastness is created.

Broche formed his creative team from completely unknown people he discovered online. He taught himself many skills: “I wouldn’t be an artist without YouTube,” he says. There he took directing lessons. He found the lead writer of Expedition 33 through Reddit and the composer via a SoundCloud post. The vision, however, was clear from the beginning: quality over quantity.

For the team, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was the first title and simultaneously a massive success. This was apparently also due to the developers being able to unleash their creativity and try out even the most absurd ideas. More on this can be found here: “We had tons of silly ideas”: Clair Obscur became so good because the developers were not afraid to implement silly ideas

This is an AI-powered translation. Some inaccuracies might exist.