For weeks, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 has multiplied the awards and titles of “Game of the Year 2025”. But there are still battles that the RPG has failed to win.
For the world of video games, 2025 will definitely have been a great year. From Split Fiction to Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, via Hollow Knight Silksong, Donkey Kong Bananza, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 or even Chiaroscuro Expedition 33the critically acclaimed releases have followed one another in the time it takes to say it. And as we now know, it is especially the latter which has attracted all the attention, to the point of being crowned “Game of the Year” at the Game Awards 2025. But the title from Sandfall Interactive will not have won all the battles.
As proof, as we quietly begin the year 2026, new awards here and there are starting to make waves on the web. Among them in particular: that of the big winner of Metacritic, a rating aggregator that needs no introduction. And as one might expect, it is not Clair Obscur Expedition 33 which wins the crown but Hades 2 and its incredible metascore of 95 on Nintendo Switch 2. The Sandfall RPG still manages to climb to second place with a very nice metascore of 92 on PS5.
Of course, this does not take anything away from the success of Clair Obscur Expedition 33, which remains one of the big winners of 2025 whatever happens. Because it may not have won the supreme developer prize, Metacritic being an extremely important site for gauging the success of a game and determining the future of a studio, the fact that it still managed to reach second place remains to be underlined. Even more so when we know that this is the first title developed by Sandfall, which therefore directly manages to get a foothold in the big leagues.
Even if, here again, this will not have allowed it to succeed in establishing itself among Steam players. Because not only did they prefer Hollow Knight Silksong to the title of GOTY 2025, but it also appears that Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is not even the best rated game of the year by users. It was Schedule 1, an open-world crime simulator, which obtained this privilege, even though no one saw it coming. The Sandfall title only comes in fourth position behind REPO and Dispatch.
The studio already at work on its next project
In short, it goes to show: if we needed proof that being the most popular game of the year isn’t enough to win all the awards, we have it. Fortunately, this won’t stop Sandfall from working on his next projectfor which the studio already ensures that it has “some great ideas [qu’ils ont] looking forward to exploring ». Will it be a sequel to Clair Obscur Expedition 33 or a completely different project? For the moment, we ignore it. But one thing is certain: there will be many players there.
Sources : Metacritic, TheGamer
