Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director questioned indie category before Game Awards wins

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche has said the team would have preferred the game’s indie award nominations at The Game Awards go to smaller studios, despite later winning both Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game.

Broche made the comments in an interview with Edge. When asked whether the game should be considered an indie title, Broche questioned how the category is defined.

“In terms of budget, we are definitely more towards triple-I,” he said. “It’s weird because it’s a 3D game with the kind of graphics that don’t necessarily fit what you think of when you think about indie games.”

Lead programmer Tom Guillermin said the project’s origins complicated that classification. “The project definitely started as indie in the very beginning,” he said.

“Now it’s a bit bigger than that. It’s hard to draw a line where you stopped being indie when you started with the same game concept and the same ideas that we ended up shipping.”

Addressing the Game Awards nominations directly, Broche added: “We’ll see what happens, but we’d rather this category went to a smaller studio. I don’t think we really needed this [nomination], even if it’s appreciated.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ultimately won Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game, beating titles including Blue Prince, Absolum, Ball x Pit, Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong in the indie category.

The discussion has renewed attention on how major awards define independent games, particularly for projects that begin as small-scale productions but expand significantly during development. 

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is developed by Sandfall Interactive and published in partnership with Xbox.