Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Part One: "She Paints Death, and the World Obeys"

A dark Belle Époque world. A yearly erasure of all who grow too old.
This is the world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, where the enigmatic Paintress paints a number and everyone of that age and older vanishes without a trace.

In Part One, we begin our descent into this French fantasy epic, leading the 33rd Expedition to break the cycle and confront the one who controls fate with a brushstroke.
With turn-based combat fused with real-time intensity, and echoes of Persona and Final Fantasy, this is one JRPG-inspired tale you won’t want to miss.

🎨 “She paints death, and the world obeys.”
🖌️ Welcome to the end of memory. Let’s begin.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a 2025 turn-based role-playing game from French developer Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive. Set in a hauntingly beautiful dark fantasy world inspired by the Belle Époque, the story unfolds on the isolated island of Lumière, where each year a mysterious event known as the Gommage erases all citizens whose age matches the number painted by a spectral entity known only as The Paintress.

To stop this annual erasure, the people of Lumière send forth a group of volunteers Expedition 33 on a desperate mission to slay the Paintress before another number is marked, and more lives are lost.

Gameplay blends classic turn-based combat with real-time mechanics such as timed actions and quick-time events. Players guide a party of characters from a third-person perspective, exploring richly detailed environments rendered in Unreal Engine 5.

The concept was born during the COVID-19 pandemic by Guillaume Broche, a former Ubisoft developer, who assembled a 30-person core team and a network of subcontractors to bring the vision to life. Inspired by legendary JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Persona, Sandfall set out to craft a high-fidelity, story-rich experience a genre they felt had been overlooked by modern AAA studios.

Released on April 24, 2025, for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 earned universal acclaim, selling over 3.3 million copies in just 33 days.