2025 is a fierce year for gaming, and in a good way, because there’s no shortage of highly-acclaimed games and success stories for indie devs. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is among those, and for a new indie IP (intellectual property), they’ve already hit some impressive milestones, notably 5 million copies sold. Now, Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur‘s dev studio, is celebrating big by giving its players a big content update, all for free.
The announcement came from the game’s official website, along with some heartfelt words of thankfulness from Sandfall Interactive. Apart from reaching the 5 million sales milestone, Clair Obscur: Expedition also saw success in music streaming platforms, with its hypnotic orchestral soundtrack poetically generating 333 million track streams.
“We’ve been completely blown away by the constant support from so many of you – Your artwork, your stories, your cosplays and your endless creativity has been loved and appreciated by all of us. To celebrate this milestone, we’re working on a game update for all platforms that will include several additions and updates as a THANK YOU!!” announced Sandfall Interactive.
Of course, Sandfall Interactive also wants to include the community in this kind of celebration, so they’re giving away a supposedly free content update with the size and scope of an expansion-priced AAA studio DLC. This content update will include the following:
- A new, playable environment, taking the characters of Expedition 33 to a brand-new location with new enemy encounters and surprises to discover.
- Challenging, new boss battles for late-game players to overcome.
- New costumes for each member of the Expedition, giving even more customization options for players throughout their adventure.
- New text and UI game localizations into Czech, Ukrainian, Latin American Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, and Indonesian, bringing the total number of supported languages to 19.
- And more to come…
This major update, which includes a new game area, a new boss, and new skins, is still in development but will be available for all platforms. It’s certainly a welcome gesture of goodwill, especially after the outrage over Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass overhaul. However, I imagine those who only got to play Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on Game Pass might have to find other ways of playing it if they cancel their subscription.
Fans are calling it early as their Game of the Year
While it’s not uncommon to find sentiments that rank Clair Obscur highly back on its release month, now, it appears the game’s spot in the Game of the Year (GOTY) race is looking stronger than ever. Many people online are amazed by the game, the devs, and just how much of a success story it was, especially for something independent and not beholden to typical investors or corporations.
Some were surprised that this scale of content was released (or, for now, announced) as a free update since, in the past, the devs were entertaining the idea of a DLC. “What. New CONTENT? Okay, didn’t expect that. I know they were flirting with the idea of dlc but I didn’t think they’d drop an area, enemies, and new bosses before a specific dlc release. Alright, back into the breach,” according to a Reddit user.
In that case, the hypothetical DLC might be even meatier than a content update. This kind of goodwill from the devs, along with the game’s quality, has led many fans to consider Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as their GOTY contender.
“All I can say is that I love this game so [expletive] much. Red dead 2 was my favourite game of all time and I thought no game could be neck to neck with red dead 2 as my favourite game but this game just surpassed all my expectations and more. This game has to win the game of the year,” exclaims another fan.
