Pre-production {{Multiple image |align=right |total_width=300 The ideas behind
Expedition 33 originated in 2019 with Guillaume Broche, an employee of
Ubisoft, not long before the
COVID-19 pandemic began; it soon grew into a passion project inspired by his childhood favorites, most notably the
Final Fantasy series. He sent out some requests for help to craft a demo to a group of other developers he knew, along with requests on
Reddit in April 2020 looking for voice actors for said demo. In order to focus on his project full-time, Broche would leave Ubisoft that year and form Sandfall Interactive, alongside François Meurisse, an old friend, and fellow Ubisoft developer Tom Guillermin. The three co-founders would soon be joined by Lorien Testard, Nicholas Maxson-Francombe and Jennifer Svedberg-Yen; the six forming the kick-off team. Maxson-Francombe, the game's art director, was discovered and recruited off ArtStation by Broche. Svedberg-Yen, one of the voice actors who had stumbled upon Broche's Reddit post and was cast for the original demo, gained a more prominent role as development progressed, becoming the game's lead writer. The funding also allowed Sandfall to expand the manpower contributing to the project beyond this core team, having outsourced gameplay combat animation to a team of eight South Korean freelance animators and
quality assurance (QA) to a few dozen QA testers from the firm QLOC, as well as receiving assistance from a half-dozen developers from Ebb Software to
port the game to consoles. The studio also hired a couple of
performance capture artists; brought in musicians for
the soundtrack recording sessions; contracted with translators from Riotloc for
language localization; and partnered with Side UK and Studio Anatole as to voice casting and production in English and French respectively. Finally, the partnership with Kepler Interactive enabled Sandfall to pay for noted professional voice actors, including Charlie Cox, Andy Serkis and Ben Starr.
Production Broche stated that the purpose of
Expedition 33 was to create a high fidelity turn-based RPG, which he felt had been neglected by
AAA game developers. Broche also considered
Lost Odyssey and
Blue Dragon, JRPGs developed for Microsoft's drive to help market the
Xbox consoles in Japan, as an influence, particularly their use of
quick time events during combat. Development began with
Unreal Engine 4, switching to
Unreal Engine 5 due to its improvements in rendering and animation.
Art and narrative post by Broche in 2020, for
We Lost, which would later become
Expedition 33. The game's setting originally took inspiration from the
steampunk subgenre. Development initially began under the codename "Project W", and was first known as
We Lost around the time that Broche sought help on Reddit. The initial demo showcased a
steampunk setting inspired by
Victorian era England, with more science fiction elements, including zombies and aliens. About six months into this approach, potential investors suggested that Broche should "think bigger" and ponder what he would want to do if they weren't restricted by their limited resources. This led him to reset the entire story, opting for the
Belle Époque—a period the French team was naturally well acquainted with and which they deemed to be a more distinctive setting—as well as taking inspiration from the
Art Deco movement for the visual world design. The new narrative was based on a painting Broche admired, which led him to think of a giantess and a doomsday clock, while also taking some inspiration from the French fantasy novel
La Horde du Contrevent by
Alain Damasio. The latter featured a horde of men, trained since childhood, undertaking an odyssey to reach the mythical "Extrême-Amont", the source of all winds. Broche's premise was then associated with a short story unrelated to the project Svedberg-Yen had written on her own for fun, in which a painter capable of traveling through her own works got lost in one, prompting her daughter's endeavor to save her. Svedberg-Yen stated one of the game's core themes, the loss of loved ones, originates with Broche's mother and represented the "final piece". As the two were stuck on the draft, Broche asked his mother what would be the worst thing that could happen to her; she answered the loss of any of her children. This notably became the foundation for Aline's character and became the catalyst for her decision to dwell in what Svedberg-Yen and Broche subsequently conceived as her departed son's canvas. While other aspects of the narrative were crafted as the game progressed, Svedberg-Yen asserted that the ending of Act I, featuring the death of Gustave, was something she and Broche had set early on, as part of the emotional journey they wanted for the characters.
Music Composition of the game's music and lyric writing were undertaken by Lorien Testard; he was later joined by Alice Duport-Percier, who composed the vocal lines and was the primary vocalist during recording. Testard used a variety of
leitmotifs through the score for various character themes, and wrote towards a range of musical genres. The music was released on music streaming platforms along with a multi-vinyl record limited edition. The game's soundtrack reached the top spot on
Billboard's Classical Albums Chart as well as Classical Crossover Albums Chart during the first week of May 2025, maintaining the No. 1 position for six consecutive weeks. In early October 2025, it was announced that within the 5 months since the game's release, the soundtrack had amassed over 333 million track streams across digital music platforms; had spent over 10 weeks at No. 1 on the two Billboard charts aforementioned; and had reached No. 1 on iTunes Top 100 Albums Chart in nine countries. ==Release==