Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Studio Not Expanding Despite Success

There are no plans to expand Sandfall Interactive, despite the success of its debut game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

The information was provided by the studio’s chief technology officer and lead programmer, Tom Guillermin, who told the website Automaton (via VGC) that increasing their development team size wasn’t necessary for the type of games they produce.

“I think for now I prefer working as a small team,” explained Guillermin. “I’m not sure how big an ‘ideal team’ would be, but when it comes to creating a full-price turn-based RPG, I believe the team we have now is just the right size.”

CEO and creative director Guillaume Broche reiterated that while the game utilized external partners for quality assurance, localization, marketing, and other tasks, the core development team remained relatively small.

“We had five people working on environments, two on story,” he said. “And I think between three and six people worked on cinematics. The music was handled by four people.”

He emphasized that the small team’s success stemmed from all members being highly skilled, noting the studio “conducted over 200 interviews to assemble the initial team,” prioritizing young talent over industry veterans.

“Back then, our VFX artist and character designer had just graduated college, and this game was their first job,” he explained. “Since they had minimal professional experience, they lacked preconceptions about workflows—which proved beneficial as they adapted to our unique development style.”

As previously revealed, Sandfall Interactive consists of 33 developers—32 people and 1 dog.