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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s producer, Francois Meurisse, says that Sandfall Interactive basically «did twice the work» of other studios to finish the game thanks to the team’s focus on setting up younger developers.
I’m sure you’re all a little sick of hearing it by now, but Clair Obscur really is one of the most surprising things to come out of gaming in a long while. The first game from Sandfall Interactive blew us all away when it launched last year, and went on to become one of the most awarded games in the history of The Game Awards.
To make Clair Obscur’s success even more impressive, Sandfall is a much smaller team than you might think (although the jury’s still out on whether it’s an indie game), and is comprised of many junior and first-time developers who had to work very hard to see the game through. Sandfall worked so hard, in fact, that its producer reckons the team did «basically twice the work» it’d take for most other titles.
Clair Obscur Producer Thinks The Studio Did "Twice The Work" To Make The Game
At Least All Of That Effort Paid Off In A Big Way
As pointed out by GamesRadar+, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s creative director, Guillaume Broche, lead designer, Michel Nora and producer, Francois Meurisse, recently talked to Edge Magazine about the game’s development. One of the key points raised in the interview was Sandfall Interactive’s team, which is made up of several first-time and junior developers.
Broche explained that one of the reasons for this is because «Montpellier is a super-young city» and «senior people tend to go for safer options», which Clair definitely wasn’t considering it’s the studio’s first game. Nora noted that the younger developers added a lot to the game, since they didn’t «have any expectations about how a studio should be run and how a game should be made».
That being said, it also wasn’t much of a decision for Sandfall, since the team didn’t have the money for more experienced developers during Clair’s creation. The focus on building up the staff, creating something new, and teaching new skills «from scratch» leads Meurisse to conclude that the team «basically did twice the work» of other teams because of the game’s scale.
I’d say we basically did twice the work, because we were doing things for the first time to that scale. — Francois Meurisse
Even with that extra effort in mind, Meurisse seems very fond of the time spent, as he notes that Sandfall was able to share ideas and collaborate with other teams in France and Montpellier. More than anything, it’s very clear that the time spent on Clair Obscur was more than worth it for everyone involved.
