Independent French studio Sandfall Interactive’s first video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, launched worldwide on Thursday, but has already built up a solid community of fans eager to discover its post-apocalyptic fantasy world.
According to Metacritic, which aggregates video games reviews, it had a 92 out of 100 “universal acclaim” score — the highest so far this year.
More than 1 million players have also added the “turn-based” role-playing game to their wish list, said the company, which was set up in 2020 in Montpellier.
Photo: AFP
One of the studio’s three cofounders said that the high numbers — rare for a game developed by an independent studio — were “extremely encouraging.”
“We are coming to the end of four years of production and even longer for some of us,” Francois Meurisse told reporters a few days before the game’s release.
“We’re now at a crucial moment,” he added calmly.
Photo: AFP
Sandfall Interactive’s 20 or so employees sit serenely behind a bank of screens on the first floor of an Art Deco-style mansion in the southern coastal city.
The building’s high ceilings, marble-accented bathroom and large garden ideal for drinks fits perfectly with the fantasy “Belle Epoque” spirit of the game.
For players, Expedition 33 starts in Lumiere, a city on an island whose iconic buildings recall the real-life City of Light — Paris.
However, while passers-by are dressed in 1900s fashion, most of the buildings barely remain standing after a disaster whose nature is gradually revealed.
Just as intriguing is a gigantic monolith that displays the number “34,” corresponding to the age at which the city’s inhabitants “fade away” and turn into flowers.
Worse still, an enigmatic “Paintress” lowers this age every year, cutting life expectancy accordingly.
As characters Gustave, Maelle, Lune, Sciel or Monaco, players must leave the island and explore a vast continent across the sea where, among forests and ruins, the heavily armed minions of the Paintress await.
Between cinematic sequences, the player-explorer must fight fierce battles to try to reach level 33, which should take at least 30 hours, and twice as long to explore the entire universe and solve side puzzles.
The story also provides its share of “unpredictable” twists and turns, according to its creators, who chose not to display an on-screen map allowing players to locate themselves.
At the studio, Guillaume Broche holds the key role of “creative director” for the game, which he has overseen from start to finish and is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
He conceived the adventure more than five years ago and wanted it to be a “role-playing” game, inspired by the Final Fantasy series, but in an environment resembling late 19th, early 20th-century France.
Broche was working in Sweden for French gaming giant Ubisoft and spoke to a colleague, Tom Guillermin, about the project.
At the end of the first COVID-19 lockdown, they teamed up with Meurisse and founded Sandfall Interactive in Montpellier, which has a long-established video game industry.
In 2022, the three young entrepreneurs were at a specialized trade show in San Francisco, where they met London-based publisher Kepler Interactive.
Kepler provided them with funding and took charge of marketing and distribution — and also helped them gain international recognition.
In June last year, Microsoft announced that Expedition 33 would also be included on the release date in its Game Pass subscription service.
Since then, interest and anticipation have grown.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
The global server market is expected to grow 12.8 percent annually this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers projected to account for 16.5 percent, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure by major cloud service providers (CSPs), market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. Global AI server shipments this year are expected to increase 28 percent year-on-year to more than 2.7 million units, driven by sustained demand from CSPs and government sovereign cloud projects, TrendForce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) told the Taipei Times. Demand for GPU-based AI servers, including Nvidia Corp’s GB and Vera Rubin rack systems, is expected to remain high,
RSS