Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director doesn't think sales and awards success should change the studio: "What we want to do is exactly what we wanted to do when we started"

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is maybe the most surprising success story of the year. A JRPG love letter not made in Japan from a first-time, relatively slim French studio wasn't always pegged to be a best-selling game of the year frontrunner, but Sandfall Interactive's CEO Guillaume Broche doesn't think the unexpected success should change the developer much.

"I feel like dramatic changes don't necessarily mean that we have to change dramatically as human beings," creative director Broche told GamesRadar+ after the game took home almost every trophy it was nominated for at The Golden Joystick Awards 2025. "What we want to do is exactly what we wanted to do when we started the game. It's just [to] make games that are really honest and true, and write stories that move people and really connect people emotionally, and that's what we are going to keep doing moving forward."

Sandfall Interactive has a little over 30 full-time employees, and used dozens more outsourced workers to finish Clair Obscur, so Broche also doesn't see the point in expanding unnecessarily. "We don't want to grow too much as a company," he said. "We work well as we are now, as a small team, and we want to stay like that, because we are very happy, and why change?"

Of course, that doesn't mean Sandfall won't incorporate lessons learned from Expedition 33's development. Broche explained there were "mistakes we made" during production the team could learn from the second time around.

"But the most striking thing, for us, and the real reward in our hearts, is the emotional response to the characters, to the story, how much people embrace the characters and they helped them get through tough moments in life," Broche added. "And I think that's why art exists in general, to create an emotional response and be something that moves people, and that’s what we want to keep on doing."

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lead says "it would be harder to embrace our Frenchness even more" unless Sandfall "put snails and frogs everywhere in the next game"