Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Launches on Steam with 145k Concurrent Players and 'Very Positive' Reviews (92% Positive)

Still climbing up:

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Great. I'm happy for indies, our French bros, turn-based RPGs and a reasonable price. Oh, and art too. Especially art. This game looks like a work of art.

But I swear that I'll be constantly hearing this shit again: "I fucking hate JRPGs because the protagonists are teenagers and for that these games can't be mature or must be shit, so this will be the only game of this style I'll play".

At least play some good games without being judgemental. And broaden your horizons, play different games if something does not click with you.
 
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Happy to see it do well. It's the definition of a AA product, and has a clear vision. Game has issues but it's fair to the scope of the project and size of team.
 
The budget for this game is easily multiple times that of low production value repetitive slop like the octopath games, but I am sure the revenue will end up in a similar place.
this game uses unreal store assets out the ass for loads of the background stuff, the devs said it themselves and theyre a team of only 30 or so, this is not a huge budget game.
 
Might want to look up the definition(s) of Invest.
Invest doesnt necessarily mean for gain, just like people Invest in other people to simply help them out.

The name is in the project its a Grant, thats actually why I included the picture, I didnt want people to think I meant the other Invest.
Its just that alot of MegaGrant recipients get approached by Epic after completion of the projects for EGS deals.
I also didnt want to just say "gave them money" because that sounds kinda callous.
I meant to clarify.
People read Epic invested in the project and will think it's some kind of publishing thing, but surprisingly without EGS exclusivity, when that's not what it is.
 
I'm playing it on game pass but next week when it's payday I'll be buying this on Steam.. a banger of a game that just gives you your money's worth without a bunch of bullshit and microtransaction nonsense.
 
this game uses unreal store assets out the ass for loads of the background stuff, the devs said it themselves and theyre a team of only 30 or so, this is not a huge budget game.
It will still be much higher than shameless cheap 2D 60$ games and stuff like Mario Party and Mario Tennis. Plus it has great regional pricing on Steam and PS store, 'free' for gamepass subscribers as well. Much better value than the aforementioned games.
 
It has surpassed the peak of yesterday and it's still increasing. Let's see where it ends up in few hours.
So I just checked, and the CCU peak for Thursday and Friday was around 14 UTC (evening time in eastern Asia), so it has about two more hours until it reaches the peak for the day.

That said, I think tomorrow's CCU peak should be higher than today's, so hopefully it reaches 100k by the time the weekend is over.
 
It has surpassed Metaphor, so this is now the single player turn-based JRPG with the highest CCU on Steam. Congrats to the team!
 
I have gamespass on pc and still bought the deluxe edition for this on steam. Did the same for oblivion. Currently away from my PC for 1 week. Very much looking forward to playing this once i am back home.
 
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Not to divert attention from the momentum of this game, but I hope it inspires faith in potential publishers to take on "Penny blood" (Shadow hearts series' spiritual successor by its original creator and team). I want to see Japanese developers tackle a bit more mature-ish/adult oriented themed JRPGs. So, I hope this inspires more JP developers to make some new JRPG IPs that go in that direction.

Irregardless of its reception, I'm glad a slender team of 30~50 is proving that teams consisting of 100~1000 people is not necessary to achieve a generally positive response from gamers. It should send a strong signal/ripple effect to board of directors everywhere across this industry. I'm also glad France/Europe is gaining more recognition, from the community, for its works outside of behemoths like Ubisoft, CDPR and such. There's a plethora of AA/indie studios from EU that don't get enough attention or go completely under the radar. They offer a neat alternative to western-US developed AAA(+) games.

I want to believe we're about to see a new AA renaissance.
 
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Not to divert attention from this momentum of this game, but I hope it inspires faith in potential publishers to take on "Penny blood" (Shadow hearts series' spiritual successor by its original creator and team). I want to see Japanese developers tackle a bit more mature-ish/adult oriented themed JRPGs. So, I hope this inspires more JP developers to make some new JRPG IPs that go in that direction.

Irregardless of its reception, I'm glad a slender team of 30~50 is proving that teams consisting of 100~1000 people is not necessary to achieve a generally positive response from gamers. It should send a strong signal/ripple effect to board of directors everywhere across this industry. I'm also glad France/Europe is gaining more recognition, from the community, for its works outside of behemoths like Ubisoft, CDPR and such. There's a plethora of AA/indie studios from EU that don't get enough attention or go completely under the radar. They offer a neat alternative to western-US developed AAA(+) games.

I want to believe we're about to see a new AA renaissance.
Europe has a shit ton of successfull games, including indies, what are you talking about.
 
It's #4 now.

I don't know if it'll pass Granblue because it'll need 20k more, but 100k+ is looking likely now.
Yeah, it's 14 UTC right now, so it will be tough to beat GB Relink with the Asian portion of Steam preparing to go to sleep in the next hour or so. It should be able to overtake it tomorrow though.
 
Europe has a shit ton of successfull games, including indies, what are you talking about.
I'm talking about lesser known low profile studios/indies. There are definitely some that have been in the industry for while which do not get nearly enough word of mouth/talk or go largely unnoticed.
 
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Yeah, it's 14 UTC right now, so it will be tough to beat GB Relink with the Asian portion of Steam preparing to go to sleep in the next hour or so. It should be able to overtake it tomorrow though.
some games only peak on the second weekend, especially when a game is almost purely driven by word of mouth. Could happen with claire idk, the game is also short for a JRPG so some people might have finished it by then, but it's still like 40h i've heard, not many are gonna finish it in a week.
 
some games only peak on the second weekend, especially when a game is almost purely driven by word of mouth. Could happen with claire idk, the game is also short for a JRPG so some people might have finished it by then, but it's still like 40h i've heard, not many are gonna finish it in a week.
Yeah, I thought about this as well. We'll have to wait and see how it goes.
 
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some games only peak on the second weekend, especially when a game is almost purely driven by word of mouth. Could happen with claire idk, the game is also short for a JRPG so some people might have finished it by then, but it's still like 40h i've heard, not many are gonna finish it in a week.

30 hours main story, 50+ hours to do everything. At least that's what I heard.
 
I'm talking about lesser known low profile studios/indies. There are definitely some that have been in the industry for while which do not get nearly enough word of mouth/talk or go unnoticed.
Simply not true. There is a town in sweden that created the walk of games, where they immortalize games made in that town that sold more than 3 million units or more than 15M downloads if it's a free game. It already features five games. All of them were driven mostly by word of mouth. Valheim, V Rising, Goat Simulator, Satisfactory and RAFT. This is just a town with 50k people.

Let's not forget Minecraft, Kingdom Come, and larian would have been considered a low profile studio before the huge success of Baldurs Gate 3.
 
Simply not true. There is a town in sweden that created the walk of games, where they immortalize games made in that town that sold more than 3 million units or more than 15M downloads if it's a free game. It already features five games. All of them were driven mostly by word of mouth. Valheim, V Rising, Goat Simulator, Satisfactory and RAFT. This is just a town with 50k people.

Let's not forget Minecraft, Kingdom Come, and larian would have been considered a low profile studio before the huge success of Baldurs Gate 3.
It seems like you're under the impression that there are none EU studios who have a low key presence. How often do you hear/read talk or discussions about for example Spiders and Cyanide studios' output on places like GAF or other fora?

Regardless, I was making a minor remark in conjunction with the Expedition 33 developers' success and their team size.
 
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It seems like you're under the impression that there are none EU studios who have a low key presence. How often do you hear/read talk or discussions about Spiders and Cyanide studios' output on places like GAF or other fora?

Regardless, I was making a minor remark in conjunction with the Expedition developers' success and their team size.
I am under no impression. Both exist everywhere and both get an ewual amount of recognition. Which should be obvious since 99.99% of the players for any given game are clueless as to where it was made so it doesnt mattet at all.
 
When JRPGs stagnated so fucking badly that some no name 30-person team puts them to shame.

This is what happens when you make a game for grown ups.
 
Nice to see. I'd do my part on PS5 but my copy says it'll arrive by May around the 8th, but it could show up sooner. Not that I'm in a rush or anything, but I'm interested in trying it out. For me the story is very Logan's Run. I prefer less existential end of the world stories. Definitely looking forward to the music.

A fair price and no MTX or expansion nonsense definitely deserve to be rewarded.
 
Nice to see. I'd do my part on PS5 but my copy says it'll arrive by May around the 8th, but it could show up sooner. Not that I'm in a rush or anything, but I'm interested in trying it out. For me the story is very Logan's Run. I prefer less existential end of the world stories. Definitely looking forward to the music.

A fair price and no MTX or expansion nonsense definitely deserve to be rewarded.

I hope it sends the right message. Small teams, risk and fair pricing can go a long way.
 
I would think most people playing Exp33 have played Oblivion or Skyrim and would be likely to play the next TES, at least in the Western part of the audience.

What's interesting to me is how much Exp33 seems to be skewing towards the Eastern market, which could partially be explained by Oblivion drawing away Western players but likely not being so much of a draw for Eastern players.

Oblivion itself seems to be skewing more heavily toward the US than Western games tend to.
 
Btw the game visual presentation's evoke some Yoshitaka Amano art vibes. Might be an opportunity for SE to take some inspiration and perhaps make a mainline FF game that brings his art to life in 3D in the same pictureseque vain as expedition 33.
 
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This game is so awesome. Been playing like 20h in two days. It feels like everything the modern FF games should've been. Been yearning for a game like this for some time.
 
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