2025 ended as one of the better years for gaming in recent memory, at least for the players. Games that had been in development seemingly forever, like Hollow Knight: Silksong and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, finally released, while some of the best sequels in recent memory, including Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Hades 2, and Death Stranding: On the Beach, arrived to build upon their already-acclaimed predecessors. Indie titles, too, flourished, as Blue Prince broke players’ minds with its puzzles, Dispatch carried on the legacy of classic Telltale games with a mature superhero story, and PEAK became the poster child for the questionably named genre of “Friendslop.” Yet, no title is so synonymous with the year as Sandfall Interactive’s breakout hit RPG, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Created by a small team of over 30 developers led by ex-Ubisoft employee Guillaume Broche, Expedition 33 was hailed as a marvel for how it united the JRPG format with a uniquely fantastical French style while telling a story of grief, loss, and creation much deeper than its initial presentation suggests. It follows the titular Expedition 33, the latest group of citizens from the city of Lumière that sets out to destroy The Paintress, a haunting being on the horizon behind a yearly Gommage that erases all people of the ever-decreasing age she paints from existence. After critics and gamers fell in love with the debut title from Sandfall, it went on to win Game of the Year at The Game Awards, along with eight of the 13 other accolades it was nominated for. With the dust now settled on such a singular success, questions are starting to be asked about what comes next for the team with Gustave, Maelle, Verso, Lune, Sciel, and Monoco laid to rest. On that front, Ben Starr is preaching patience. Over the weekend, the voice of Verso joined his friend and Best Performance Game Award-winner Jennifer English for an Expedition 33 Q&A at Fan Expo Canada moderated by Collider’s Maggie Lovitt, where they were asked about the future of Sandfall, whether it involves a DLC expansion for their masterpiece, a new title in the Clair Obscur world, or something else. The team hasn’t been entirely quiet since Expedition 33 arrived, releasing a “Thank You” update with new content including Verso’s Drafts in celebration of their Game of the Year win, but there’s been no word about anything major. Starr wanted to remind everyone that this is still a small team and games of that magnitude take time.
“Obviously we’re not supposed to speak for Sandfall Interactive, but they’re a small team. I think that update was a beautiful one. I hope you’ve enjoyed and enjoyed taking pictures. We’ve enjoyed seeing everyone’s pictures from that update. I can’t say what they’re working on. I imagine they’re working on their next project; good for them, I hope so. No pressure! But yeah, they’re an amazing team, and every now and again Guillaume sends us little updates. Not from the game he’s making, just like proof of life.”

Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

Parasite
Everything Everywhere
Oppenheimer
Birdman
No Country for Old Men

FIND YOUR FILM →

01
What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.

ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I’m watching one kind of film and then reveals I’m watching another entirely.
BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once.
CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I’m watching.
DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do.
ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.

NEXT QUESTION →

02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?

AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity.
BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart.
CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back.
DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you’re still alive to watch it happen.
EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.

NEXT QUESTION →

03
How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.

AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different.
BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride.
CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence.
DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I’m living it in real time, no cuts to safety.
ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

NEXT QUESTION →

04
What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?

AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face.
BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most.
CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect.
DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance.
EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.

NEXT QUESTION →

05
What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?

AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it.
BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess.
CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after.
DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I’m still thinking about it days later.
EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.

NEXT QUESTION →

06
Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.

AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation.
BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person.
CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades.
DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap.
EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.

NEXT QUESTION →

07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.

AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface.
BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you’re watching.
DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them.
ESilence and restraint — what’s left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.

NEXT QUESTION →

08
What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.

ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary.
CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other.
DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing.
EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.

NEXT QUESTION →

09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.

AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end.
CEpic runtime doesn’t scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours.
DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout.
EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.

NEXT QUESTION →

10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?

AUnsettled — like I’ve just seen something I can’t fully explain but can’t stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto.
CHumbled — like I’ve been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming.
DExhilarated — like I’ve just seen cinema doing something it’s never quite done before.
EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.

REVEAL MY FILM →

The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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Ben Starr Thinks Sandfall Interactive Aren’t Going to Sit Still for Long After ‘Expedition 33’

Video games, even compared to other mediums, are remarkably complex creatures that combine so many talented individuals of varying skillsets. The biggest productions typically take five, or often more, years to make with much larger teams than what Sandfall is working with. It makes for a sometimes awkward period afterward of just talking about a game to publications, expos, and more while the next project comes together in the background. “It’s a weird thing making video games,” Starr added. “You make it, and then you have to spend a year and a half just kind of talking about it, and I think a lot of people are just creatives. I don’t mind working on stuff. I do love talking about it; that’s when you really get into the meat of the creative part.” There has been plenty said about Expedition 33 since its release, and much more conversation to come as gamers continue to reflect on the characters and themes behind one of the best titles of the 2020s so far. Starr feels confident that the team is the type to be itching to make something new and unique, even if it takes a minute. “I think they’re creative people, so whatever they work on next, I know it’s going to be amazing. Let them cook. There’s a reason why this game is so special.” In the meantime, Starr has added a few more notable titles to his resume, joining Destiny developers Bungie on their new extraction shooter, Marathon, and lending his voice to the tactical RPG Ledgerbound.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on what comes next for Sandfall after their monumental success.