Expedition 33 devs won’t “scale up” for their next game because they embrace “limitations,” want to create — “We love making games more than we love managing”

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As expected, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the first game from Sandfall Interactive, was a huge award winner. The turn-based RPG, often called an ‘FRPG,’ earned nine awards at The Game Awards, including the coveted Game of the Year, and received numerous accolades from other awarding bodies as well.

Sandfall has received a lot of praise for its work and is now looking ahead to new games. However, despite the huge success of Expedition 33, the studio doesn’t plan to expand its team; they intend to stay at their current size.

According to director Guillaume Broche (via GamesRadar), the team behind Sandfall isn’t planning a bigger, more ambitious project. Broche believes that having limitations actually fosters creativity, allowing them to focus on delivering the best possible experience.

Despite having the resources and recognition to grow significantly, Sandfall prefers to concentrate on game development itself, according to Broche. They want to avoid the complexities of managing a much larger team.

Now that we have more funding, we could expand, but we’re not really interested. The team, including myself, prefers to focus on actually *making* the games, rather than managing a larger operation. We all really enjoy the creative work, and the last five years have been incredibly fulfilling – I’d like to recapture that feeling.

As an analyst, I can see the appeal of greatly expanding Sandfall and attempting a project even more ambitious than Expedition 33. It’s definitely tempting! However, I completely understand and respect the studio’s, and particularly Broche’s, current stance on the matter.

Despite a common misconception that Expedition 33 was created by only 30 developers, the award-winning RPG actually benefited from significant contributions by external contractors. However, Sandfall, the studio behind the game, does have a small, core team, which likely allows them to maintain a clear vision and prioritize development over administrative tasks.

Sandfall deliberately chose not to pursue certain highly promising opportunities because they wanted to keep the same creative process that made their game, Expedition 33, so successful. This shows they value the team’s passion and enjoyment more than simply maximizing profits – a refreshing approach when many large game studios are constantly striving for bigger, more ambitious projects, many of which ultimately fail.

Despite a minor setback at the end of 2025 – a disqualification from The Indie Game Awards due to the temporary use of AI-created textures – Expedition 33 became the most popular third-party game added to Xbox Game Pass that year. You can play it now as part of Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription.

If you don’t want to play Expedition 33 with your Xbox Game Pass subscription, you can buy the game outright. It normally costs $49.99, but right now you can get the PC version for $29.49 at Loaded.

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2025-12-22 23:39