Game of the Year 2025 devs underestimated their work. „Most of us were aiming at around 80”

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was a huge and unexpected hit last year. Both critics and players loved it, and it was a standout winner at The Game Awards 2025. The game’s success surprised even its developer, Sandfall Interactive, who had deliberately avoided making overly optimistic predictions about sales and reviews.

Predicted score on Metacritic

François Meurisse, a co-founder of the studio behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, recently told Edge magazine that, six months before the game launched, the team thought it might get a score of around 80 out of 100 on Metacritic (a site that averages critic reviews). They were hoping for a slightly higher score, though.

About six months to a year before the game launched, we did some early testing and estimated scores around 80. As we neared the final stages of development, we set a goal of 85 on Metacritic, and the team really pushed to improve the game’s quality in the last few months. While we were aiming for 85, exceeding 90 on Metacritic was a fantastic achievement and a huge boost for the team – that’s when things really started to pick up.

Nicholas Maxson-Francombe, the art director for Expedition 33, shared that the team generally felt the game was “pretty good” and they were happy with how it turned out, despite it not being a huge commercial success.

We all made predictions about the game’s Metacritic score, and most of us guessed around 80. We believed it was a solid game, and we were pleased with our work. Even if the game hadn’t sold well, we still would have felt a sense of accomplishment.

Okay, so it looks like the developers were a little surprised by how well the game was received! It’s sitting at a 92 on Metacritic for the PS5 version, which is awesome, but player scores are even higher – a 9.6/10! That’s seriously one of the best scores the site has ever seen. But get this – on Steam, Expedition 33 is doing even better, with 98% of players giving it a thumbs up. And people are still playing it a lot, especially considering it’s a single-player game. All the buzz from The Game Awards 2025 and the recent update definitely helped keep it going!

Why such an underestimation?

Tom Guillermin, the lead developer of Expedition 33, explained why they underestimated the final quality of the game. He said a frequent problem is that developers become too familiar with early, unfinished versions. This makes it difficult to judge their work objectively because they’re used to seeing the initial, rough state of the project – before things like voice acting are added – and that affects their perspective.

Judging a game’s quality can be tricky because your first impression is often based on early, unfinished builds. These early versions usually have temporary elements like robotic voices instead of proper dialogue, which can affect your overall opinion.

Meurisse explained that he always tries to prepare for the worst while remaining optimistic – a mindset that led him to avoid setting overly high expectations. The team proactively identified numerous ways the project could fail, which wasn’t unusual considering even well-funded, popular projects sometimes struggle. Surprisingly, none of those negative scenarios actually happened, and the project ultimately surpassed everyone’s expectations.

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2025-12-31 15:04