According to former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida, turn-based RPGs, particularly JRPGs, were so unpopular several years ago that he would tell indie developers to avoid using the term altogether in their marketing—even for a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Yoshida recalled giving the Clair Obscur developers this advice during a lecture at the Busan Indie Connect Festival 2026 (via Automaton). He was impressed by a demo he played a couple of years before the game was out, particularly its similarities to The Legend of Dragoon, a game he produced, but recommended the developers at Sandfall Interactive find alternative ways to describe its combat.
“It’s incredibly well-made, but it would be better not to call it a turn-based RPG,” he said. “That alone might cause players to overlook it.”
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Sandfall listened and started describing Clair Obscur’s combat as “reactive turn-based battles” in its marketing. It’s hard to tell if that actually had an impact on the breakout success of the game, but it probably didn’t hurt.
Even if you set aside the supposed genre stigma, I think calling Clair Obscur a turn-based RPG does undercut how active the combat actually feels. It isn’t the kind of game where you can get up and grab a snack in between turns. You’re encouraged to study how enemies move so you can time all your dodges and parries, as if you’re playing a soulslike.
Did adding a single word before “turn-based” change everything? I’m not convinced it was the sole reason the game caught people’s attention when it already looked fast-paced in trailers. But it does speak to the tendency for many games in the genre to only appeal to people who grew up with them, and the number of people who fall asleep when threatened with having to take turns during the action.
Thankfully, Clair Obscur has helped make turn-based games cool again. It sold 3.3 million copies in the first month and has since surpassed eight million copies as of April. Yoshida believes Clair Obscur is a great example of why chasing industry trends isn’t always the right move. He also said that publishers have started to see a slew of turn-based games pitched to them in the wake of Clair Obscur’s explosive success.