Clair Obscur demanded manual rework on more than 1,100 attacks

During the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the team at Sandfall Interactive faced the classic dilemma of the game industry: a major gameplay improvement that required massive and manual rework in practically the entire combat system of the game. The account was shared by Guillaume Broche, CEO and creative director of the studio, in an interview with the channel Pirate Software. The moment of revelation came in the middle of production, when Broche identified an adjustment in the feel of the attack animations that made the battles significantly more satisfying.

"That's when I found something that made the game look ten times better during enemy attacks," explained the director. The problem? This change would require manually revising and adjusting over 1,100 attacks and abilities.

According to Broche, each ability required three to four minutes of individual work, which represents hundreds of hours just to refine something that, visually, may go unnoticed by players, but in practice, defines the feeling of the game.

"You think: okay, let's do this," knowing it will hurt, but also knowing it is necessary," he added.

The demand for polish was not limited to programming and animations. Nicholas Maxson-Francome, art director, shared his own frustration with the need to redo the entire 2D world map.

"I made the first version of the map and suddenly our UI designer, Victor, came back saying that the coordinates were all wrong, nothing aligned with the real world of the game. So I had to redo everything from scratch," he reported.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, announced during the Xbox Games Showcase 2024, is a turn-based RPG with real-time combat inspired by games like Persona and Final Fantasy, and is being developed in the Unreal Engine 5. The project is one of the major bets of Kepler Interactive, a group that also finances studios like Sloclap and A44 Games. Set to be released in 2025, the game will be launched for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. 

The stories reveal not only the technical and artistic effort of the team, but also the unforeseen events that mark the development of ambitious games. They help to understand why certain details require so much time: they are not just effects or maps; they are decisions that directly affect the player's experience and need to be correct. 

As the hype for the game grows, the team at Sandfall Interactive continues to deal with the weight of their own discoveries - always striving to deliver a refined experience, even if it costs nights of work and hundreds of meticulous adjustments.