With the massive success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, both critically and commercially, some might assume that developer Sandfall Interactive might be scaling up to tackle more projects.

That won’t be the case, according to studio founder Guillaume Broche and Expedition 33 creative director Tom Guillermin.

It’s worth noting that Sandfall is a small studio that managed to release what could very well be 2025’s Game of the Year.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Developers Is “Just The Right Size” Says Game Director

Speaking to Autmaton, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lead programmer and creative director Tom Guillermin was asked about future studio expansion. The developer didn’t beat around the bush, and squashed any notion that the studio might be expanding soon, stating that the dev team is just the right size to craft games like Expedition 33.

“I think that, for now, I’d prefer working as a small team. I’m not sure how big “an ideal team” would be (laughs). But when it comes to making a full-priced turn-based RPG, I believe that the team we have now is just the right size,” mused Guillermin

While Sandfall had the support of external partners for things like quality assurance (QA), localization and marketing, the actual work done on the RPG was with a very small team. Broche explained, “We had five people working on environments, two on the story. And I think, around three to six people worked on the cinematics. The music was done by four people.”

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The reason everything worked out was that each one was carefully hand-picked over the course of more than 200 interviews. Broche explained, “After establishing our company, we conducted over 200 interviews in order to gather the first team members. The screenings were rather rigorous.”

Broche revealed that instead of industry veterans, he opted for younger people who had “fighting spirit.” This was due to younger devs having fewer assumptions about what each job was supposed to be. “At the time, our VFX artist and character designer had both just graduated from college, and this game was their first job ever. Since they had very little experience working, they also didn’t have many existing notions of what work was supposed to be like – which I think I was a good thing, because they managed to adapt to our peculiar work style,” Broche said,

Whatever Broche did, it worked, as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 plays like an AAA game, but with a much smaller budget.

Although there’s no sequel announced for Expedition 33, a film adaptation is in the works. No word yet on whether we’re getting more story content, but we did get a new update yesterday that added quality-of-life improvements and more.

Will other studios follow Sandfall’s development process? I wouldn’t be surprised if they did, given the rising development costs.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Released

April 24, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence

Developer(s)

Sandfall Interactive

Publisher(s)

Kepler Interactive

Engine

Unreal Engine 5