Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been one of 2025’s biggest successes so far, and it’s now sold more than 3.3 million copies. What contributed to the game’s big success? No doubt a number of factors, including its lower price and smaller scope, according to publisher Kepler Interactive.
Kepler’s Matthew Handrahan told GI.biz that Expedition 33 „really respects the player’s time;“ it’s not a game that offers size for the sake of size. „It gives them plenty to do, and it gives them plenty of satisfaction, but it isn’t arbitrarily 500 hours of gameplay,“ he said. „It’s impactful because it’s scoped correctly. […] It doesn’t have any sense of bloat or extraneous things that are put there just to make it larger and larger and larger.“
Handrahan went on to say he believes „brevity should be more of a virtue in gaming,“ adding that „something can be better by being shorter.“