So, it finally happened. The Game Awards 2025 wrapped up, and we have a winner that honestly, a lot of people didn’t see coming. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took home the Game of the Year trophy. It wasn’t the biggest budget game in the room. It wasn’t the one with the most marketing posters plastered on the sides of buses in New York City. But it won. And frankly, it’s about time something like this happened.
We need to talk about what went down at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles because the vibe was different this year. Usually, you go into these things knowing who is going to win. It’s predictable. This time, the room felt tense. When the envelope opened, there was a genuine pause before the applause hit. Sandfall Interactive, a studio that didn’t even exist on the main stage a few years ago, just beat out the titans of the industry.
The Big Winner: What Won at The Game Awards 2025?
If you just want the short answer: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won Game of the Year. That is the headline. But stopping there misses the point of why this is a big deal. This is a turn-based RPG. Do you know how hard it is for a turn-based game to win the big prize in 2025? The industry has been obsessed with real-time action, open worlds, and live-service models for a decade. For a game that asks you to wait your turn to attack to win the highest honor, it says something about where players’ heads are at right now.
The game isn’t just standard turn-based fare, though. It uses this reactive system where you have to dodge and parry in real-time, even though the command structure is turn-based. It keeps your brain engaged. You aren’t just mashing X. You are watching enemy animations, learning patterns. It’s stressful in a good way. The graphics are powered by Unreal Engine 5, and they look ridiculous. Like, actually painting-come-to-life ridiculous. That art style—Belle Époque influence mixed with fantasy—is probably what pushed it over the edge for the voters.
Other winners filled out the night, obviously. You had your usual suspects taking Best Action and Best Narrative. But the night belonged to Expedition 33. It swept Best RPG and Best Art Direction too, which makes sense. If you look at the screen for five seconds, you can see why it won Art Direction.
Location and Atmosphere: Where Were The Game Awards in 2025?
They held it in Los Angeles, at the Peacock Theater. Same as the last few years. It’s become the home base for Geoff Keighley’s show. December 11 was the date. It’s always that second week of December. It’s a weird time for an awards show if you think about it. Right before the holidays, developers are tired, the press is tired, everyone just wants to go home. But the energy in LA was high this time.
The venue matters because it dictates the scale. The Peacock isn’t a massive stadium, but it’s big enough to feel important. You get the orchestra right there in the pit. When they played the medley for the Game of the Year nominees, and the theme for Clair Obscur hit, the cello section went hard. It grounded the whole thing. It’s easy to forget these are pieces of art when we argue about frame rates on Twitter all day. Being there, or even watching the stream, you get reminded that hundreds of people spent years of their lives making these things.
The Number One Spot: Which Game is No. 1 in the World in 2025?
This is a tricky question because “number one” means different things to different people. If you are talking about sales, it’s probably still one of the annualized shooters or a massive open-world sequel that sells 20 million copies in a week. Those games print money. But if you are asking which game is number one in terms of quality, critical reception, and cultural impact right now? It is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Being named Game of the Year cements it as the “number one” game for the history books. Ten years from now, when people look at the 2025 Wikipedia entry, this is the game they will see listed at the top. It beat out the competition because it felt complete. That is a rare thing these days. So many games launch broken or unfinished, waiting for a patch six months later. Expedition 33 launched, and it worked. It told a story about the Paintress waking up to paint a number on a monolith that kills everyone of that age. It’s dark, it’s weird, and it stuck the landing.
Why Did It Win Over the Others?
There is always a “most likely to win” game going into the night. People place bets. Forums argue for months. A lot of people thought the sheer scale of the other nominees would drown out a focused RPG. Usually, the game with the biggest map wins. Or the game with the most celebrity cameos.
So, what game was most likely to win the game of the year 2025 before the envelope opened? Many analysts were pointing toward the massive open-world action titles released earlier in the year. They had the sales numbers. They had the hype. But voter fatigue is real. I think the jury was tired of clearing out bandit camps. They wanted something that respected their time. Clair Obscur is roughly 30 to 40 hours. It’s not 150 hours of bloat. That matters. It’s a practical fact: if your game is too long, judges might not even finish it. If they don’t finish it, they don’t vote for it.
The Mechanics of the Win
Let’s get technical for a second. Why does this matter for the industry? When a game like this wins, greenlights change. Publishers look at the winner and say, “Okay, maybe we don’t need a live-service battle pass.” Maybe we can fund a single-player narrative game with high production values that doesn’t try to be everything to everyone.
The “reactive turn-based” system is the key here. It solved the problem people have with turn-based games being “boring.” You can’t look at your phone while playing Expedition 33. If you miss a dodge, you die. It brings the tension of an action game into the strategic layer of an RPG. It’s not a new idea—Mario & Luigi did it, Sea of Stars did it—but Clair Obscur did it with photorealistic graphics and a serious tone. It legitimized the mechanic for a AAA audience.
Common Mistakes in Predicting Winners
People always mess this up. They look at Twitch viewership. They think, “Oh, this streamer is playing this game, so it must be the best.” That’s not how The Game Awards works. It’s a mix of fan votes and a global jury of media outlets. The jury holds the most weight (usually 90%). Critics value different things than streamers. Critics value pacing, narrative cohesion, and technical performance. They don’t care if a game is “clip-able.”
Another mistake is assuming a sequel always wins. Sequels have it hard. They have to be better than the first one, which is already nostalgic in people’s heads. Clair Obscur had the advantage of being a new IP. It was fresh. No one had baggage with it. No one was saying, “The first one was better.” That “new car smell” helps a lot in voting season.
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What Happens Next?
Sandfall Interactive is going to get a lot of phone calls. Their budget for the next game just tripled. But for us, the players, it means we might see a resurgence of high-fidelity turn-based games. We might see more studios taking risks on weird art styles instead of chasing photorealism that looks like real life but feels like nothing. The Belle Époque style—inspired by late 19th-century France—was a risk. It could have looked pretentious. Instead, it looked iconic.
If you haven’t played it yet, you probably should. Not just because it won, but because it’s interesting. And honestly, we don’t get enough “interesting” in the AAA space anymore. We get “competent.” We get “polished.” But interesting? That’s rare. That is why it won.
So, 2025 goes to the Paintress and her Expedition. It was a good year. A weird year, but a good one. Now we wait and see if the industry actually learns anything from this, or if they just go back to making battle royales. I’m hoping for the former, but I’ve been around long enough to not hold my breath.
