Maybe you’re a souls fan, maybe not – but even if you aren’t, Elden Ring’s success can’t be denied. Now it seems like there’s a new sheriff in town, since the Clair Obscur GOTY race is officially over: It has beaten Elden Ring and sits at a whopping 436 GOTY titles, which is insanely impressive for a small studio like that.
So now that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has surged past Elden Ring’s already impressive count of Game of the Year wins, it is officially the most-awarded GOTY game like…ever. And trust us, it ain’t like it won one big show like the Oscars, nah, it won everywhere. Seriously. Outlets, ceremonies, and end of the year lists, this title has literally hit the home run.
The wild part for us? Sandfall Interactive is such a young studio and the Clair Obscur GOTY thing wasn’t on anyone’s radar back then – and it has now seized to be just interesting, it’s now kind of unstoppable. All of that in far less time than it takes most AAA games to ship a patch 2.0 to fix what they messed up in the first place. Damn!
So let’s have a look at what made the Clair Obscur GOTY happen, and why we think this is a very interesting turn of events – for big studios and smaller ones alike.
Let’s Talk Numbers Behind the Clair Obscur GOTY takeover
The headline itself is simple: Clair Obscur has 436 game of the year wins, Elden Ring has 429. We’re sure you can count, so the Clair Obscur GOTY takeover is perfectly valid. This is also the combined total from a pretty big spread of different sources, like huge industry events, media outlets, some podcasts sprinkled on top, and also publication-specific GOTY picks.
So this tally is already impressive for a big studio like FromSoftware, who carved out a niche – and basically created its own genre – for itself, but for a small French studio like Sandfall? It’s pretty much unheard of.
Plus, think about this: this Clair Obscur GOTY race isn’t just won between the RPG and Elden Ring, it’s between it and…well, everything else, despite the fact even modders of other games tried to keep it on top. So if you compare it to the game sitting on that throne before Elden Ring dethroned it (The Last of Us Part II, for whatever reason), that game sits even further back.
Think about that next time you look at a tiny indie studio, even if Silksong didn’t show you that you don’t need millions of dollars to make a memorable game in the first place. But how did Sandfall Interactive pull it off?
How a Small Studio Won Clair Obscur GOTY
It is one of the stories we like to tell whenever we can, a small underdog winning the hearts of players and critics – a story for the ages. But it isn’t just that, we think the game just hit a nerve at the right time, so a little bit of luck was probably involved here, we’d wager.
For us, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is exactly the kind of RPG that thrives on the stories that players tell each other, because their playthrough was so vastly different than that of their friends. It’s also a combination of good visual identity, a confident tone, and a combat system that doesn’t just copy the latest souls-like for the sake of it, but actually has some personality, some character of its own.
The story was also something we’d like to mention, because it was emotional and intimate without spoiling too much. For us (because we can already hear some people thinking it), the fact that it was the underdog probably had little to do with the Clair Obscur GOTY takeover, it’s not that it’s that much of a niche RPG that critics just couldn’t help themselves.
What this means for smaller studios: The Clair Obscur GOTY Win means ambition is allowed again
Clair Obscur proves adequately that you don’t need to be the biggest name in the room to be the most talked-about game of the year. You need a hook that feels fresh, production values that hold up, and polish that makes players trust you early.
It also strengthens the case for mid-sized premium-feeling development: not tiny, not bloated, just, you know…focused. With a clear vision. Let’s face it, if you can deliver a distinctive experience that looks great, plays great, and has a voice of its own, without being an echo of another, the ceiling is suddenly much higher than break even and hope for a sequel.
Our big takeaway here? We need studios to stop chasing AAA production values, and, above all, the open world trend, which bloats the game and rarely works out, considering the limited manpower a lot of these studios (if not all of them) have.
And to all the AAA studios? Well, perhaps spectacle and cinematic value isn’t enough anymore, and we need recognizable brands for a strong, creative point of view – the Clair Obscur GOTY takeover is proof of that, my friends.
