FRENCH INDEPENDENT STUDIO'S FIRST VIDEO GAME DRAWS FANS

Independent French studio Sandfall Interactive's first video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched worldwide last week but has already built up a solid community of fans eager to discover its post-apocalyptic fantasy world.

- PHILIPPE SIUBERSKI

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 a million players have also added the “turn-based” role-playing game to their wish-list, according to the company, which was set up in 2020 in Montpellier, southern France.

One of the studio's three co-founders said 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 said a few days before the game's release. “We're now at a crucial moment.”

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 of Montpellier.