Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leads resist calls to “scale up,” insist they “love making games more than managing”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive is resisting calls to “scale up now [it has] a lot more money” because “we love making games more than we love managing.”

In an interview with Edge magazine, as reported by GamesRadar+, creative director Guillaume Broche and lead programmer Tom Guillermin were asked if they’d considered ramping up the studio’s size and scope given the phenomenal success of its JRPG, Expedition 33.

“No, I think it’s good to have limitations when you are creative,” Broche said when asked if there was a temptation to make the next Clair Obscur game even bigger. “It’s the best way to be the best version of yourself.

“We could scale up now we have a lot more money, but I would say it’s not tempting for us, because even the management team and myself, we’d have to be hands-on and doing things for ourselves. We love making games more than we love managing, so we want to keep doing that.”

He added: “These past five years were some of the best of my life, and I want to be happy like that again.”

“In terms of team dynamics, everybody knows everybody in the team, and people are used to working together,” Guillermin added. “Now we are lucky enough to have a strong foundation from the previous project, but expanding for the sake of expanding is not our vision.

“Our vision is to ship quality games, and we don’t believe you need to have a lot of people to do that. There are large teams that deliver great games, of course, but for us what works best is pretty much our current size. We don’t want to change the team structure and dynamic.”

Over the weekend, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was awarded Game of the Year at the 15th Annual New York Game Awards. It’s also been nominated eight times across nine categories at the 26th annual Game Developer Choice Awards, and the same again at the upcoming 2026 DICE Awards.