Most gamers know what a video game costs to purchase, but few know how much one costs to make. Take Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the debut RPG from Sandfall Interactive that has already racked up a number of game of the year accolades, including from us! While the game's gorgeous visuals, stunning performances, and fluid gameplay are AAA quality, the game had only a fraction of the budget afforded to AAA studios.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Sandfall Interactive revealed the final budget for Clair Obscur came in at "less than $10 million." For context, 2023's Final Fantasy 16, a recent entry in the series that served as major inspiration for Clair Obscur, cost roughly $58 million according to a recent investor presentation. Yet, even that is a small number in the larger AAA space, where budgets for some of the biggest franchises in the world balloon up to $300 or even $700 million – in the cases of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, respectively. So what's Sandfall's secret? Being resourceful.
"With the internet, you can learn pretty much anything," director Guillaume Broche tells The New York Times. Clair Obscur's lead writer was found through Reddit, the composer via SoundCloud, and Broche taught himself to direct through watching YouTube videos. Eventually, Sandfall collected a core team of 30 people.
Once funding was secured through publisher Kepler Interactive, the team continued to make smart choices to keep costs down. That included reviving classic features from RPGs of old, such as an overworld map that steered clear of bloated (and costly) open-world designs of many AAA games today. Similarly, the environments that players do explore utilize art direction to great effect, making smaller guided levels feel larger than they actually are. Sandfall also chose to save money by offloading battle animations – a part of the finished game that has received a tremendous amount of praise – to a team in Korea.
All in all, these decisions led to a leaner, cheaper, but no-less impactful game. The proof is in the pudding, as Clair Obscur has sold more than five million copies and is the favorite to come home with some, if not all, of the twelve Game Awards it is nominated for.
