Your first look at gameplay from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Follow us on a journey through Flying Waters to locate Maelle.

Once a year, the Paintress awakens and marks her cursed number upon a monolith. Everyone of that age turns to smoke and fades away, erased for eternity. With each passing year, the number ticks down, and a brave group sets out to stop her.

Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG with real-time mechanics, centered around the eponymous Expedition as they strive to prevent The Paintress from ever painting again. This preview offers a glimpse into an early area of the game, shortly after the Expedition sets out, focusing on a region known as Flying Waters. Here, Gustave and Lune are searching for Maelle, another member of the Expedition, and must navigate the area to uncover clues to her whereabouts.

We've infused Expedition 33 with rich environmental storytelling. Throughout the game, you’ll encounter numerous destroyed structures, worn paths, and remnants of the Expeditions that came before. For example in Flying Waters, Expedition 68 met their end, and by exploring the setting you can see how they met their demise.

You can switch the party leader at any time when you traverse the world of Expedition 33, letting them lead the Expedition as you explore the world and overcome the challenges ahead. Whether you prefer to lead with your favorite character or the one best suited for the upcoming battle, the choice is yours. You can also customize their appearance, with unique outfits and hairstyles discoverable across the world. These customized looks have no effect on your character’s skills or abilities, so you are free to use whatever fits your style the best.

You can interact with the environment using climbing hooks, ledges left by previous Expeditions, or the Grapple in your kit to ascend great heights. Exploration is heavily rewarded throughout the game, and you’ll come across environmental puzzles called Paint Cages that can aid your journey, along with items called Pictos that teach you new abilities. Pictos work similarly to accessories or gear in traditional RPGs, and bestow stat bonuses to the character who has them equipped. They also have unique passive skills associated with them, called Lumina. Having a Picto equipped allows the character to learn the associated Lumina permanently, and you can equip a wide range of them to diversify your builds, and customize your party to suit a preferred playstyle.

Combat

Our battle system is what we call Reactive Turn Based, where you’ll need to input commands when you attack, but also remain reactive whilst enemies attack to effectively defend your party from damage. Players take turns attacking or defending, with the turn order displayed on the left side of the screen. While basic attacks deal low damage, skills often involve a timed reactive command to maximize their effectiveness and add additional bonuses. Skills cost Action Points (AP) to use, and the cost varies between skills. Though you gain one AP per turn, you can customize your build to get AP from other sources - such as successful parries. Some multi-hit skills may allow you to chain an attack combo, unless you fail your inputs. Some may even backfire and cause damage to you if you fail your input, so careful timing and practice will be key to maximizing your effectiveness in battle.

Similarly, when an enemy attacks, you'll need to time your inputs to minimize damage. The timing windows for these inputs vary—dodging has a larger window, allowing you to evade the attack entirely, while parrying has a tighter window that negates damage and can trigger a powerful counter attack if you successfully parry the entire enemy combo.

Bosses

Bosses may also have unique mechanics or additional challenges to overcome. For example, Goblu is surrounded by flowers in the encounter, which can bestow it with powerful buffs and advantages that can quickly overwhelm the party. In this case, you can make use of the free-aim system to fire at these flowers and close their buds, limiting their effectiveness and ensuring the Expedition has the upper-hand against these powerful adversaries. Finding and exploiting these unique mechanics can be integral to boss battles.

We hope you've enjoyed this early look at the game, and we're looking forward to sharing more with you soon. We're a young, ambitious team, eager to pay homage to our favorite games in the genre while crafting something unique and entirely our own.

See you soon, Expeditioners!

~ The Expedition 33 Team

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launches in 2025.

Enlist in the Expedition and get exclusive subscriber rewards. Start your journey and enlist below: