Building on reports of their doubled efforts, Sandfall Interactive's lead designer Michel Nohra and producer Francois Meurisse revealed in Edge Magazine how the novice team's fresh ideas overcame inexperience to deliver Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the award-winning 2025 RPG.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Sandfall Interactive's debut hit from France, wowed critics in 2025 with its world-building, narrative, combat, and characters. As detailed earlier, the young team's lack of industry baggage enabled bold innovation—but at double the workload of veterans.
In Edge Magazine, Nohra praised the juniors' mindset: "The younger staff didn't have any expectations about how a studio should be run and how a game should be made, and they brought fresh ideas that were very valuable for the rest of the project."
Initial budget limits favored hiring fresh talent, which Meurisse called a silver lining for avoiding bad habits. Still, forging new systems from scratch required intense research and testing. "We were trying to create something new, and even new skills, from scratch," Meurisse noted. "I'd say we basically did twice the work, because we were doing things for the first time to that scale."
Guidance from Montpellier's game dev community proved crucial, sharing best practices. This perseverance and collaboration underscore how newcomers can excel.
