Sandfall Won the Lottery – And Refuses to Spend It the Way You Think
Most studios that go from “who are these people?” to awards-show regulars in one year follow a familiar arc. The next project arrives faster, the team doubles in size, and design decisions quietly start orbiting around “what the fans want.”
Sandfall Interactive is doing something very different.
Fresh off the staggering success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33—a debut that sold over five million copies in six months and vacuumed up year-end awards—the French studio is openly saying it won’t design its next game around fan expectations. The team hears the pressure; it just doesn’t plan to answer to it.
That decision puts Sandfall at a crossroads that’s as much about business as it is about art.
From Unknown to “Defining Hit” in One Game
Before Expedition 33, Sandfall was essentially a new name in the mid-budget RPG space. Within half a year of launch, it became one of 2025’s defining games and a rare example of a turn-based, heavily stylized RPG breaking out of its niche.
For a studio of that size, the success is transformative in three ways:
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Financially – the revenue gives them runway to take bigger risks.
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Reputationally – they now have a global audience that will show up for whatever has “Clair Obscur” on the box.
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Culturally – they suddenly have millions of people with strong opinions about what they “should” do next.
That third point is where the tension lives, and Sandfall seems acutely aware of it.
“North Star” Design: Why Sandfall Is Refusing to Chase the Crowd
In a recent interview, co-founder and COO François Meurisse admitted the obvious: success brings pressure. The interesting part is what he says after that. He describes the pressure as secondary to the studio’s core habit of taking time to chase ideas that genuinely excite the team.
Lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen pushes that even further. She describes the studio’s guiding principle as its own “North Star” – their personal taste and instincts, not a community wishlist. She even calls herself a natural people pleaser, and then basically says she can’t afford to give in to that impulse.
Her reasoning is very 2025:
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She’s watched books, shows, and games lose personality by trying to satisfy everyone.
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She knows that once you start sanding down edges for broader appeal, it’s hard to stop.
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She sees the risk that Clair Obscur becomes content, not a point of view.
So instead of promising fan-driven sequels, Sandfall is publicly planting its flag in “we follow our own taste.” That’s a bold line to draw while you’re sitting on one of the year’s biggest breakout hits.
The Strategy Behind Staying Small
If Sandfall’s philosophy stopped at “we’re following our gut,” it would sound romantic but naïve. It doesn’t stop there.
Co-founder and lead programmer Tom Guillermin has already said that, even with Expedition 33’s financial success, the studio isn’t aiming to balloon in size. He feels the current headcount is “just the right size” for making an ambitious turn-based RPG.
It’s a conscious rejection of the usual post-hit playbook:
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Not rapidly scaling to a 300-person pipeline.
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Not spinning up three satellite teams and a transmedia division.
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Not building a live-service content treadmill around Expedition 33.
There are tradeoffs:
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Development times stay long. Expedition 33 reportedly took five to six years; the next game likely won’t land before around 2030–2031, meaning it will live on next-gen hardware.
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The studio’s risk is concentrated into fewer, larger bets.
But the upsides are substantial:
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Less internal pressure to chase trends because huge headcount isn’t demanding constant revenue.
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Cleaner internal communication, which is critical for a game that leans on tone and narrative cohesion.
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A chance to keep that “mid-sized auteur studio” identity at a time when the AA space is shrinking.
In a landscape where a lot of beloved RPG studios have slowly grown into something more corporate, Sandfall is very clearly trying not to.
Building a Franchise Without Building a Formula
One of the most interesting stray comments from CEO Guillaume Broche is the idea that “Clair Obscur” is the franchise name, and Expedition 33 is just one story within it.
That framing quietly echoes what Final Fantasy has been doing for decades:
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Same overarching banner, radically different casts and sub-worlds.
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A loose set of thematic and aesthetic throughlines instead of tight continuity.
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Freedom to pivot tone and mechanics between entries without “betraying the canon.”
If Sandfall follows that model, you can imagine:
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A second Clair Obscur game in a different era or region of the same universe.
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New protagonists and themes anchored by familiar motifs, visual language, or metaphysical rules.
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Occasional callbacks to Expedition 33 that reward returning players without gatekeeping newcomers.
The big advantage here is flexibility. Anthology-style series are harder for fans to box in. Instead of “you have to continue this party’s story exactly how we imagine,” the expectation becomes “you have to surprise us in ways that still feel like Clair Obscur.”
That’s a much healthier kind of pressure for a studio that wants to stay guided by instinct.
How Expedition 33 Changes Their Starting Line
Sandfall’s next project is still in early stages, but it won’t be built under the same conditions as Expedition 33.
They now have:
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A proven tech and tools stack for turn-based combat and lavish art direction.
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A veteran team that’s shipped a full, complex RPG together.
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A live test case of what resonated: pacing, character archetypes, difficulty curves, aesthetic choices.
Meurisse describes this as starting from a stronger position—not in the sense of making a safer sequel, but in the sense of confidence. The team knows it can ship something “artsy” and still reach millions. That’s rare.
It frees them to:
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Push weirder mechanical ideas without worrying they’ll scare off the entire market.
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Refine the parts of Expedition 33 that clearly worked instead of rebuilding everything from scratch.
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Say “no” to features that only exist because other RPGs have them.
From a systems point of view, that might mean a tighter focus rather than a bigger checklist.
What This Means for Players in the Short Term
For fans who just want more content right now, Sandfall’s approach is a mixed bag.
What they’ve already done
The studio didn’t walk away the moment Expedition 33 shipped. In December, players got a substantial free DLC:
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A new playable area, Verso’s Drafts
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Extra costumes
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New music
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A set of high-end boss fights aimed at people who’d already mastered the base game
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A long-requested photo mode
That package functions as both a thank-you and a closing bow on the first chapter of Clair Obscur.
What they haven’t promised
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No confirmed paid expansions.
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No live-service roadmap.
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No detailed tease of the next game beyond “another artsy title” in the same universe.
If you’re hoping for annual drops in this specific expedition, that’s probably not happening. The tradeoff is that when something new does arrive, it’s more likely to feel like a full creative statement than a content pack.
Risks: When “We Follow Our Own Taste” Backfires
There’s a reason a lot of studios end up bending toward fan demands: sometimes, ignoring them burns you. A few obvious risks for Sandfall:
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Expectation whiplash – if Clair Obscur’s next story pivots too hard (tone, structure, combat focus), a portion of the audience will feel alienated.
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Over-correction – being so afraid of “people pleasing” that valid criticism gets dismissed as noise.
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Time gap fatigue – a six-year wait in a fast-moving industry means players’ tastes shift; what feels bold in 2025 might feel familiar in 2031.
The studio will need to walk a tightrope: listening enough to keep a dialogue with its community, not so much that it loses what made its first game stand out.
Why This Matters Beyond Clair Obscur
Sandfall’s situation is a microcosm of a larger tension in the industry:
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Mid-size studios want to make distinctive, “authored” games.
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Investors and platforms want quicker follow-ups and broader appeal.
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Players say they love originality, then often punish big swings that don’t match their headcanon.
By publicly committing to its own instincts after a huge success, Sandfall is effectively stress-testing whether a modern AA studio can stay weird and survive.
If their next game hits, it strengthens the case for other teams to resist becoming franchise factories. If it stumbles, you can bet a lot of publishers will cite it as evidence that “following your heart” is bad business.
For now, the studio seems content to live with that gamble. It trusted its taste once and ended up with one of the year’s most talked-about RPGs. The next move will show whether that wasn’t a lucky roll, but a sustainable way of working.
