People might say that you need a team of 200+ in-house developers to craft a good game, but here’s a story to prove them wrong. Sandfall Interactive has revealed the core team composition behind the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one of the most visually striking RPGs of the year. In a talk with Japanese media outlet Gamemakers, the team shared that at its production peak, the game was developed by around 35 people, including:
- 4 Programmers
- 5 Environment Artists
- 3 Character Designers
- 3 Game Designers
- 6 Cinematic Artists
- 8 Combat Animators (outsourced to Korean freelancers)
- 4 Sound Designers
The development itself was done in-house, but the team also outsourced QA, localization, and platform porting work to external partners. The compact yet efficient team structure showcases that you don’t need an enormous team to build an ambitious, high-quality game, especially when mixed with outsourcing and strong creative direction.
They were also asked what they would pay attention to if they were to create Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from scratch again. They said they would do a shipping version of the packaging as quickly as possible. The team struggled with vertical slicing because they were unaware that the shipping version and the debug version were distinct.
The developers also noted that memory overload is quite common in Unreal Engine, so they wish they had studied memory management sooner. They also admitted that even after releasing the game, the file and folder management is a total mess, and they should have organized it from the beginning.
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