Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Reveals First Look at Gameplay

Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive have revealed seven minutes of gameplay from the upcoming turn-based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The title will feature unique real-time mechanics, and the new video shows off Flying Waters, a mysterious region in which Lune and Gustav must find their missing companion Maelle.

“Once a year, the Paintress wakes and paints upon her monolith,” reads the game’s description. “Paints her cursed number. And everyone of that age turns to smoke and fades away. Year by year, that number ticks down and more of us are erased. Tomorrow she’ll wake and paint “33.” And tomorrow we depart on our final mission – Destroy the Paintress, so she can never paint death again. We are Expedition 33.”

In a recent interview with PC Gamer, the game’s creative director Guillaume Broche discussed the team’s influences when conceiving unique the title. Unsurprisingly, given the gameplay shown in the most recent trailer, the Persona series made a huge impact on the devs.

“I wouldn’t say that Persona is the biggest influence on what we do,” Broche said. I don’t hide my love of action for the Final Fantasy 8, 9, and 10 era. I think a lot of the core of the game definitely takes inspiration from that. Not directly. It’s not like we take it from the games. The game is more like [what] I grew up with, and kind of built my creative tastes on. So I would say we take a lot of influence from them but not directly trying to pick things from them.”

And on the Persona side, yeah, we definitely took a look at what they were doing in terms of the camera movements, and the menus, and how everything has been created dynamically, and trying to do something that really feels dynamic, but is also more like our own thing, in a way. Because, also, we have a very different art style. We just wanted to do it our own way.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be released in 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. It will also be available on Xbox Game Pass.