Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive won’t chase fan expectations with its next game. A company official said as much in a recent interview, while acknowledging that the upcoming project will benefit from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in more than one way.
Released last April, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 turned into one of 2025’s defining hits, sweeping multiple award ceremonies and clearing 5 million sales in its first six months on the market. French developer Sandfall Interactive recently confirmed it has started preliminary work on its next title.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Player Spends Over 8 Hours and 10,000 Parries Fighting Just 1 Boss
Parrying in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a precise art, but one player clearly has mastered it during an eight-hour-long boss battle.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Dev Wants To Keep Following Its Instincts
In a new interview with Edge magazine, Sandfall co-founder and chief operating officer François Meurisse conceded that “there is a bit of pressure” that the French studio is feeling following the immense success of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. However, he called it “not so important,” stressing that the team is adamant to keep doing things the way it did so far, by taking the time to explore ideas that excite them. Lead writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen echoed that view, saying Sandfall will keep being guided by “our own personal taste,” symbolically calling that the developer’s “North Star.”
Elaborating on this sentiment, Svedberg-Yen described herself as a “bit of a people pleaser,” suggesting that following her own advice may not always be easy now that Sandfall has millions of fans and is therefore facing significant expectations. At the same time, she made it clear that she understands the risks of compromising creative direction, noting she has seen too many books, TV shows, and other media lose their identity by trying to please everyone. “We need to trust our instincts and continue to trust the vision behind the studio,” Svedberg-Yen concluded.
Meurisse frames Sandfall’s next project as building from a stronger starting line, with a more experienced and confident team. Both his and Svedberg-Yen’s remarks largely align with what Sandfall CEO Guillaume Broche recently said about the upcoming project, stating that the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer wants to make another “artsy” game. While not much is known about the project itself, Sandfall has previously signaled it wants to make a sequel that’s still set in the same universe. The way Broche explained it, Clair Obscur is the planned franchise name, and Expedition 33 was merely one of the stories that the studio wanted to tell. Exactly what shape future stories will tell and how they will relate to Expedition 33 is still up in the air. Based on what little Sandfall has shared to date, it is possible that Clair Obscur will end up being an anthology series, not unlike Final Fantasy, one of its main inspirations.
We need to trust our instincts and continue to trust the vision behind the studio.
The Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 developer recently signaled it was not planning to get much bigger anytime soon. While the game’s tremendous success allowed it a level of financial security that would make a significant expansion possible, co-founder and lead programmer Tom Guillermin sees Sandfall’s current team as “just the right size” for making an ambitious turn-based RPG, having said as much in an August 2025 interview. Given that plan and the fact that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took five to six years to develop, Sandfall’s next title may follow a similar timeline, potentially releasing around 2030 or 2031, well within the next console generation.
As a thank-you to fans, Sandfall released a sizable free DLC for Expedition 33 in December 2025, adding a new playable area called Verso’s Drafts, a photo mode, additional costumes, new music, and several exceedingly challenging boss fights. There is currently no official word on whether more content is planned for the game, or if the studio will now fully focus on its next project.
- Released
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April 24, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Sandfall Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Kepler Interactive
Source: GamesRadar+
