To say Sandfall Interactive has gained a few fans after releasing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 would be a wild understatement. In fact, the RPG wasn’t just GameSpot’s Game of the Year, but also made history at The Game Awards. This all means expectations will be sky high for the developer’s next project. However, Sandfall wants to avoid appealing to the masses and continue focusing on “what we think is cool.”
Speaking with Edge magazine, Sandfall lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen noted that “it’s always in the back of my mind that we have a lot of fans now, and they have certain expectations and certain feelings toward the game.” The goal for the team is to avoid that noise.
“Creatively, we’ve always let our North Star be our own personal taste in terms of what we think is cool–what it is we enjoy and want to see. I’ve seen too many TV shows and books be swayed trying to please a lot of people, and in the process you end up losing the heart of what’s there,” Svedberg-Yen said. “So [we] feel like we need to trust our instincts and continue to trust the vision behind the studio.”
Sandfall COO and producer François Meurisse added that he knows “there is a bit of pressure” with the team’s next game. Meurisse stated again that the developer has “some great ideas,” which is a point he’s reinforced since last May. It’s unknown whether the studio will make a sequel to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 or something entirely new.
Last month, Sandfall CEO and creative director Guillaume Broche said that the studio didn’t plan on scaling up for the next game, even though it could. The critical and commercial success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has given the developer a ton more financial resources to work with going forward. But Broche doesn’t want to throw this money at just making the team bigger.
For more, check out GameSpot’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review. The RPG received a major new update right after The Game Awards, featuring a new area to explore and quality-of-life improvements.