Clair Obscur Expedition 33 director explains why Sandfall’s next game won’t be a bigger production – “It’s good to have limitations”

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive is starting to work on their next game. While we don’t know any major details about the project, Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche says it won’t be “bigger” or have a “larger-scale production” because “It’s good to have limitations when you are creative”.

Speaking to the Knowledge video games industry newsletter, Broche says, “We could scale up now that we have a lot more money, but I would say it’s not tempting for us”. As for why Sandfall Interactive doesn’t want to scale up, Broche argues that “it’s good to have limitations when you are creative, [as] it’s the best way to be the best version of yourself”.

Sandfall Interactive’s team size is around 30 to 40 people, a size that Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima believes is perfect. Work for Expedition 33, such as combat animations, was outsourced to South Korean animators, so the game wasn’t just made by a team of 30 people, but it was the core group.

While growing bigger in size could provide benefits, Broche says it’s not an avenue Sandfall is exploring because “We love making games more than we love managing, so we want to keep doing that”. Broche adds that “These past five years were some of the best of my life, and I want to be happy like that again”.

Broche also says the secret to any game’s success is to “adapt the game to the [development] team you have… [while] making a game that you want to play”. The director admits, “It’s contradictory,” but you have to try to “not care too much about the players, because if you care about your game, it means you care about the players ultimately”.  

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 developer’s next game

Even though Clair Obscur Expedition 33 only launched in April, Sandfall Interactive shared in October that they are “starting to work on their next game”. Speaking to PCGamesN, Guillaume Broche says Sandfall “have a lot of very good ideas,” and the studio “wants to remain very small and agile with a strong creative vision and a game that feels very unique and artsy”.

Although not revealing anything major about the project, Broche says Sandfall “wants to make stories like an art house, making crazy projects because we want to make them, and that’s the philosophy we want to stick by – especially now because we have so much attention and so much love from the players”.

Although we don’t know the direction of Sandfall’s next game, it seems poised to be more Clair Obscur as Sandfall insists Expedition 33 is “not the end” of the franchise, as it’s just “one story”. Sandfall has admitted that Clair Obscur is inspired by Final Fantasy, so it’s probable that future Clair Obscur installments will be independent stories featuring a new cast of characters, just like most mainline Final Fantasy entries.

Sandfall Interactive’s next game will be highly anticipated. There wasn’t much anticipation for Expedition 33 because it was Sandfall Interactive’s first release, but now the developer has gained a following thanks to all of Expedition 33’s success.

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 dominated The Game Awards, winning a historic nine awards with the most nominations in Game Awards history, too. Expedition 33 also won Ultimate Game of the Year from the Golden Joystick Awards and is part of the BAFTA Game Awards 2026 GOTY longlist.

In addition to winning dozens of awards, Expedition 33 is reportedly a commercial success with over six million sales.