Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won nine trophies at 2025’s The Game Awards ceremony on Thursday, including the coveted title of Game of the Year. The tally of wins breaks the record of seven wins set by The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020.
The debut game by independent French studio Sandfall Interactive also won awards for Best Art Direction, Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Performance, Best Score and Music, Best Independent Game, Best RPG, and Best Debut Game. Jennifer English won Best Performance for her role as Maelle — one of three nominees from Clair Obscur in the category. The game did not win the fan-voted Players’ Choice award, which went to Wuthering Waves.
The only award Clair Obscur did not win that it was nominated for was Best Audio Design, which went to Battlefield 6.
Clair Obscur’s victory was expected; it was an overwhelming favorite at this year’s awards. Prior to the ceremony, prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket put its chances of winning Game of the Year at 93% and 96% respectively.
Nevertheless, the scale of Sandfall and publisher Kepler Interactive’s achievement is remarkable. Clair Obscur began the year as a rank outsider, little-known among gamers. Sandfall was an unknown quantity, and Kepler a young, small publisher known for left-field indie games like Pacific Drive and Sifu. Grand Theft Auto 6 had been expected to dominate 2025’s awards before developer Rockstar Games delayed it into 2026.
But Clair Obscur received unanimous praise from critics on its release in April, while a prominent spot in the lineup for Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service helped its profile. A slick, cinematic, story-forward RPG of the kind favored by The Game Awards’ jury, Clair Obscur also filled a vacant space in a relatively quiet year for major new game releases.
Not that Clair Obscur was running unopposed. Its triumph comes in the face of competition from such established names as Nintendo (with Donkey Kong Bananza), Sony (Ghost of Yōtei) and superstar designer Hideo Kojima (Death Stranding 2: On the Beach), as well as the hotly anticipated indie sequels Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2.
