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Олександр КузьменкоGameDev Eng
6 May 2025, 11:11
2025-05-06
The head of Sandfall Interactive studio got bored working at Ubisoft and assembled a team of Junkies who created a potential game of the year
Guillaume Brosche, who was working at Ubisoft during the height of the Covid pandemic, decided he was fed up with his job and wanted to pursue his own project. He founded and led the French studio Sandfall Interactive and assembled a small team of young developers, who five years later released Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The game quickly became a hit with millions of sales, and is already being called one of the main contenders for the title of game of the year.
Guillaume Brosche, who was working at Ubisoft during the height of the Covid pandemic, decided he was fed up with his job and wanted to pursue his own project. He founded and led the French studio Sandfall Interactive and assembled a small team of young developers, who five years later released Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The game quickly became a hit with millions of sales, and is already being called one of the main contenders for the title of game of the year.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was released in late April on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S (including GamePass subscription), and PC. In just 3 days since its release, it has sold 1 million copies, and peak online concurrent players on Steam recently exceeded 145,000. Even French President Emmanuel Macron noted the project’s success.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a turn-based RPG set in Lumiere, a fictional world where there is a huge monolith with a number glowing on its surface. In this world, a creature known as the Artist appears every year and reduces the number by one, causing all people of that age to disappear. Players lead a group that seeks to destroy this mysterious creature.
Development of the game began five years ago when Guillaume Brosche began recruiting a team of developers by posting on Reddit and online forums to potential colleagues. One of those who responded was Jennifer Swedberg-Yen, who was quarantined in Australia at the time, writes the BBC.
«I saw a post on Reddit by Guillaume asking voice actors to record something for free for a demo. I thought, ‘I’ve never done that, but it sounds cool,’ so I sent him an audition,» she said.
Jennifer initially voiced the protagonist in an early version of the game, but later changed roles and became the team’s lead writer.
After receiving funding from publisher Kepler Interactive, the core team grew to 30 people. Many of them were found in similar, unconventional ways as Jennifer. For example, composer Lorien Testard, who had never worked on a video game before, was discovered through a message on the music sharing site Soundcloud.
The publisher’s support also allowed the studio to bring in big-name actors, including Charlie Cox from «Daredevil,» «Lord of the Rings» star Andy Serkis, and video game actors Jennifer English and Ben Starr.
Jennifer Swedberg-Yen notes that Guillaume is «very good at finding really cool people.» The head of Sandfall Interactive himself modestly says that he has an extraordinary talent for finding creative people. According to him, he chose people who «fit the direction» in which he wanted to develop the project.
«I think we have a great team, mostly young people, but they are incredibly interested in the project and talented. Somehow it worked out, which still doesn’t make sense to me after all these years,» admitted Guillaume.
While the core team for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 consisted of 30 young developers, Sandfall Interactive also needed additional help from supporting studios, musicians, and other specialists, according to Ukrainian game developer Dmytro Nesterenko.
According to him, when people say that a 50-60 hour project that «wipes the noses of all AAA studios» was created by only 30 developers, this is «to put it mildly, manipulation of facts».
«Non-public companies can very conveniently appeal to various development facts, talk about the size of the team, but they won’t tell everything. The number of developers on the team, the number of outsourcers, code-dev studios, and all sorts of out-staff are all very different numbers. The total number of developers could be 30, 90, 150, or all 330. And if we open the credits, the figure will grow to 412 (if not all 502)!», — Nesterenko pointed out.
He added that currently projects are rarely made by a single studio and are usually assisted by «many outside studios».
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