Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was certainly one of 2025’s largest breakout hits, and the sport’s industrial success has afforded developer Sandfall Interactive the chance to scale up for its subsequent undertaking. Nonetheless, the corporate will not be going to do that–and for what seems like a great cause.
Talking to Edge, studio boss Guillaume Broche mentioned he doesn’t really feel tempted to develop the corporate within the wake of the success of Expedition 33, which was the studio’s debut title. Why not? He mentioned (via GI.biz), “I believe it is good to have limitations if you end up artistic.”
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“It’s the easiest way to be the most effective model of your self. We may scale up now we now have much more cash, however I might say it is not tempting for us, as a result of even the administration group and myself, we would must be hands-on and doing issues for ourselves,” he mentioned. “We love making video games greater than we love managing, so we need to preserve doing that. These previous 5 years have been among the better of my life, and I need to be completely happy like that once more.”
He went on to say that his philosophy is to “adapt the sport to the group, and never the opposite approach round.” He mentioned Sandfall’s ambition with Expedition 33 was to make a recreation its builders wished to play.
“It’s making a recreation that you simply need to play. It’s contradictory, however [try to] not care an excessive amount of concerning the gamers, as a result of in case you care about your recreation, it means you care concerning the gamers in the end,” he mentioned. “The easiest way for me to care about individuals is to make one thing that’s honest. If it feels human, [even] if there are little flaws right here and there, it is forgivable. It simply has to have a powerful soul and identification.”
Expedition 33 bought greater than 5 million copies and received quite a few awards. This included a document 9 wins at The Sport Awards, together with total Sport of the Yr.
The sport was lately embroiled in controversy, as The Indie Sport Awards revoked its Sport of the Yr win as a result of AI issues. The sport additionally courted some controversy over its designation as an “impartial” recreation. Its success additionally impressed individuals to see hope for the longer term in the case of lower-budget video games discovering success in a market dominated by many costly sequels.
Sandfall has not mentioned what it would make subsequent, however it would have very massive sneakers to fill given the immense important and industrial success of Expedition 33. GameSpot named Expedition 33 our Sport of the Yr.