Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Switch 2 Port in the Works, Sandfall Warns of Technical Challenge

Sandfall Interactive is exploring a Nintendo Switch 2 version of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, but the studio has been candid that getting the Unreal Engine 5 game running on Nintendo’s hardware is a “big technical challenge” with no announcement close. Speaking to Automaton, the team laid out exactly what stands in the way, and it is as much about the size of the studio as the power of the console.

The honest answer, from CEO and creative director Guillaume Broche, is that nothing is settled.

Why It Is Hard

The problem starts with what the game is. “It’s a big technical challenge because we tried to do something beautiful with the game, but of course, the Switch 2 is not as powerful as the PlayStation or the Xbox Series X,” said Tom Guillermin, Sandfall’s chief technical officer and lead programmer. “So, it’s an important thing for us to consider, especially given the size of our studio.” Guillermin noted that a number of Unreal Engine 5 features simply “don’t work on Switch 2”.

That last point is the crux, because it means the timeline is not fully in Sandfall’s hands. “Epic is introducing features like Lumen Lite now, which is easier to run than the standard Lumen, but these things take time to roll out, so we’ll have to consider the updates coming from Unreal Engine to determine what to do,” said lead character artist Alan Reynaud. In other words, how feasible the port becomes depends on what Epic ships and when.

On timing, Broche was direct. “We are interested in looking for a way to do it, but it’s too early for us to announce anything at this point.”

A 30-Person Studio That Wants to Stay Small

The studio-size caveat carries weight. Clair Obscur was built by a team of around 30 people with outsourced support, and it went on to sell a million copies in three days and take Game of the Year honours. Sandfall’s position is that staying small is a feature rather than a constraint to grow out of.

Unreal Engine is central to how that works. “For starters, Unreal Engine has all the tools you need to make a game that looks big, even if you’re not a big team,” the team said, crediting fortunate timing as Unreal Engine 5, MetaHuman, Nanite and Lumen each arrived at useful points in production. Blueprints, Unreal’s visual scripting system, matter most: with only four programmers on staff, every game designer and technical artist uses Blueprints to build game and environment logic, which the studio calls crucial to shipping at that quality. The same dependency that let 30 people make something that looks enormous is what now ties a Switch 2 port to Epic’s roadmap.

Read More: Clair Obscur Expedition 33 Future Teased As Writer Refuses To Reveal Plans 

Limitations as Design Philosophy

Sandfall’s reluctance to scale up is deliberate, and Broche frames the game’s constraints as part of why it worked. The studio operates out of a Montpellier building it calls The Manor, which it had already built into the game before the municipal government offered it for viewing. “When we visited, we’d already made the manor in our game, and when we opened the door, we just went ‘It’s the same!'”

The philosophy behind it is that an office “shouldn’t feel like coming to an office, it should feel like entering a house where you’re just making games with friends.” The team says staying small keeps a strong creative vision and ensures “everything we produce has a real reason to be.” Expedition 33 was a long project, six years for Broche, five and a half for Guillermin and between four and five for most of the team, which is part of why they now want to “let ourselves dream again and be creative again.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and any Switch 2 version remains unannounced.