The office that developer Sandfall Interactive works out of is actually a whole manor that looks exactly like the one found in the studio's breakout sensation, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but the similarity was purely coincidental.
"I wouldn't call it big, it's not super big," creative director and Sandfall CEO Guillaume Broche says of the manor while speaking to Automaton. "But the office space we'd used before, when we had around 10 people on board, was quite… let's say bad quality. And very, very small. "
When Sandfall Interactive finally got into cahoots with publisher Kepler Interactive and began building a bigger team, the Montpellier government hooked the developer up with the building they now call The Manor. "When we visited, we'd already made the manor in our game, and when we opened the door, we just went 'It's the same!' That's why we just had to take it," Broche says.
You can see brief glimpses of the gorgeous work space from 2025's Xbox Developer Direct showcase, embedded below, which gave us a look at the game and the team behind it prior to its release.
"Our philosophy was, if you come to the office, it shouldn't feel like coming to an office, it should feel like entering a house where you're just making games with friends," Broche continues. "We wanted it to feel warm. So now, we have this manor, though it's not like a massive manor with crazy gardens and everything. It's quite small, but everybody's close to each other, which makes it easier to communicate. We also have a garden now where we play Pétanque and Ping Pong regularly."
Off the back of Clair Obscur's phenomenal success, the team at Sandfall could theoretically find someplace bigger to call home, but keeping a tighter space is "really important" for Broche and his ambition to "keep this independent spirit" that made the team's debut game in the first place.
"To have an office that's just like a house where everybody feels welcome and good, and where everybody finds it easy to joke around."
