Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's director was 'starving for new turn-based RPGs,' and figured if he wanted them, there would be others out there who'd want to play his game

Lady smiling with the sun in her face.

I had the chance to talk to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 producer François Meurisse during the 2025 Game Developers Conference, and the Sandfall Interactive COO got down to brass tacks about how the game draws on JRPG history, the types of stories that can be told with these mechanics, and how the ambitious Expedition 33 has more in common with previous JRPGs than it might seem.

Meurisse told me that the game came about because Sandfall founder and Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche "was kind of starving for new turn based RPG games when he started development as a passion project in early 2019."