Presentation
Sandfall Interactive is a French studio founded in 2020 and based in Montpellier.
Its story, however, begins before its official existence.
Guillaume Broche first develops a turn-based RPG project on his own, alongside his job. Tom Guillermin then joins him for programming, and other collaborators arrive as the prototype becomes too ambitious to remain an evening hobby.
The studio is thus born less from a business plan than from a game that became too big to stay a hobby.
This origin explains the philosophy Sandfall now promotes: use modern technologies and tools to produce ambitious 3D games with a team deliberately smaller and more agile than the structures traditionally associated with AAA productions.
The first project long carried the name Project W.
The team left Paris for Montpellier in 2021, received several public and private supports, adopted Unreal Engine 5, then signed in 2023 with Kepler Interactive, which became the game's publisher.
In June 2024, Project W revealed its real name: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
The game combines a turn-based RPG structure with real-time actions and builds a universe fed by the French Belle Époque, fantasy, surrealism, and assumed Japanese influences.
It was released on April 24, 2025.
Its success immediately changed the studio's symbolic scale: several million copies sold, international awards, and cultural attention far above that usually associated with a young team's first game.
But this success should not absorb the whole sheet.
Sandfall remains interesting for a broader question:
how far can a small team push the ambition of a production without adopting the structure of a studio with several hundred people?
After Expedition 33, the challenge becomes even harder.
The studio must now grow without losing the agility that was precisely one of its reasons to exist.
History
Before 2020: the game exists before the company
The project that would become Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began as a personal initiative by Guillaume Broche.
The initial goal was not to immediately launch a company.
He wanted to make a turn-based RPG different from those he then found on the market.
The project grew through successive needs.
When programming became too important, Tom Guillermin joined the adventure.
Other collaborators then arrived to meet concrete problems of design, art, or production.
This chronology explains a lasting characteristic of Sandfall:
the organization builds around the game's needs rather than the other way around.
2020-2021: turning the prototype into a studio
In 2020, the team considered it had a project and a core solid enough to officially create Sandfall Interactive.
The studio kept Project W as the center of its activity.
In April 2021, it left Paris to settle in Montpellier.
The structure was still small.
This scale reduced certain distances between trades and sped up decisions, but it obviously limited available resources.
Sandfall therefore had to learn very early to stay compact without working in a closed vase.
A small team relies on a large network
Development received various supports, notably an Epic MegaGrant, aid from the CNC and Occitanie Region, as well as the backing of partners and external collaborators.
This reality nuances the romantic narrative of a small studio building its game alone.
Sandfall keeps a compact creative core.
But it relies on a wider network of technology, financing, providers, talents, and publishing.
This distinction becomes essential when the public starts comparing the studio's internal size to that of much larger productions.
A small team does not mean isolated production.
Unreal Engine 5 as a multiplier
Sandfall adopts Unreal Engine 5.
The choice fits directly with its philosophy.
The studio does not want to spend a disproportionate part of its resources rebuilding generic tools already available elsewhere.
A modern engine provides a base for rendering, lighting, characters, world management, and other technical needs.
The gain is therefore not only graphical.
Every infrastructure problem the team does not have to solve itself frees up time for what more belongs to the work's identity.
Technology becomes a small team multiplier.
2023: Kepler brings a publishing structure
In March 2023, Sandfall announces its partnership with Kepler Interactive.
Kepler becomes the publisher of Project W.
The distinction matters:
Sandfall develops. Kepler publishes.
The arrival of this partner nonetheless accompanies a change of scale.
The team grows, external collaborations strengthen, and the production benefits from wider support around launch and international distribution.
Sandfall's creative independence therefore does not mean having to rebuild all of a publisher's trades alone.
Finding a visual identity that is not a simple mix of references
During development, the art direction evolved strongly.
The team progressively sought to leave fantasy imaginations deemed too familiar and turned to the French Belle Époque, combined with elements of surrealism, painting, and fantasy.
The result does not seek to historically reconstruct early 20th century France.
This period becomes material.
Japanese influences play an important parallel role in the RPG structure and certain gaming sensibilities.
Sandfall does not therefore choose between a French identity and JRPG inspiration.
It builds precisely something in the encounter between these references.
Modernizing turn-based combat without replacing it
Combat follows the same logic.
Sandfall assumes its attachment to turn-based play.
But it adds dodges, parries, counters, free aim, and other actions executed in real time.
The goal is not to gradually turn the RPG into an action RPG.
Turn-based remains the central structure.
Real-time actions rather change how the player inhabits their turn.
This distinction rather well sums up the studio's method: modernize an old language without starting by assuming it must be abandoned.
2024-2025: the project becomes a public work
In June 2024, Project W was officially presented as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
The game was released on April 24, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
For Sandfall, this date changes everything.
Before launch, the studio had a promising project.
After it, it has a work the public can really judge.
Success comes quickly and largely exceeds the usual scale of a first game.
Expedition 33 crosses several million copies sold and receives numerous distinctions, including Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025 and Best Game at the BAFTA Games Awards 2026.
These results validate the project.
They do not constitute a reproducible method on their own.
After success: the real organizational test
Success transforms expectations.
A first game can be developed with the almost obsessive goal of proving it is possible.
The next one is born while a global audience is already expecting something from the studio.
Sandfall must now avoid a classic contradiction:
grow enough to support its new ambitions,
without adding so many layers, processes, and distance between trades that it would lose precisely the agility that built its first success.
This is probably the most important subject of its next period.
What Sets It Apart
Small team does not mean small ambition
Sandfall explicitly rejects the idea that a compact studio must choose a minimal aesthetic or technical ambition.
The studio aims for detailed characters, 3D environments, significant staging, and ambitious narrative production.
Size thus becomes a method problem.
How to get more with less internal structure?
This question is much more interesting than the simple number of people employed.
Agility exists thanks to the network, not despite it
A small team can decide quickly.
It does not, however, have all the skills a major production needs.
Sandfall therefore combines internal proximity with external support.
Publisher, engine, providers, institutions, actors, and specialists broaden the core's capabilities without forcing the studio to integrate everything under the same roof.
Agility is therefore not synonymous with isolation.
It rests on the ability to choose what must stay internal and what can be entrusted to a partner.
Using existing technology to focus creative effort
Unreal Engine 5 plays an important role in this organization.
Sandfall can use already-built tools and devote more resources to its characters, combat system, world, and art direction.
This logic matches a broader transformation of the industry.
As engines become more complete, a small team can access capabilities once much more expensive to rebuild.
Technology does not replace creation.
It allows shifting effort toward what makes the work specific.
Modernizing a heritage without treating it as a flaw
Turn-based combat is probably the most visible example of this philosophy.
Sandfall does not start from the principle that a modern RPG must become an action game.
It keeps the strategy and character building while adding real-time actions.
Modernization therefore does not mean removing the old language.
It consists of looking for what can be added to it without destroying it.
A cultural identity born from the crossing
Expedition 33 looks toward the JRPG while using a visual sensibility strongly linked to France and the Belle Époque.
This combination avoids two shortcuts.
The game does not try to become Japanese.
It also does not turn France into mere tourist scenery.
References become interesting when they stop being a moodboard and start truly organizing characters, places, and the feeling of the world.
For Sandfall, this encounter between influences can become a more lasting signature than any precise franchise.
Good to Know
- Sandfall Interactive was founded in 2020 and is based in Montpellier.
- The project that would become Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began before the studio's official creation as Guillaume Broche's personal project.
- Guillaume Broche is founder and creative director; Tom Guillermin is one of the first collaborators then co-founders of the studio.
- Sandfall left Paris for Montpellier in April 2021.
- The project originally carried the name Project W.
- Development notably benefited from an Epic MegaGrant and support from the CNC and the Occitanie Region.
- Kepler Interactive became the project's publisher in 2023; Sandfall remained its developer.
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was developed with Unreal Engine 5.
- The game was released on April 24, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
- Expedition 33 is Sandfall Interactive's first published game and its success immediately transforms the scale and expectations surrounding the studio.