The article cites, from the developers, that the development budget for the game was under $10M, but take that with a grain of salt, because from SkillUp’s interviews with the team, getting Andy Serkis and Charlie Cox on the project was considered to be a marketing expense. Still, what they were able to do with so little is extremely impressive, and I hope that Guillaume Broche is correct and we’re going to soon see more games achieving a similar scope and budget with modern tools.

Sandfall, which said the budget for Clair Obscur was less than $10 million, conserved resources by avoiding the open-world trend. It borrowed an old formula for role-playing games, with beautifully rendered levels that are essentially large corridors and characters who are transported to a battle arena when they collide with enemies. The overworld map is a miniature version of the explorable realm, allowing players to feel the expanse without forcing designers to render every small detail.

…“You don’t need to fill your game with hundreds of hours of checklist content,” [Billy] Basso said. “People like more straightforward games.”

I kind of wish I could just make this into a sign, point to it, and show every publisher that laid off hundreds of devs making a $200M game in 6 years that no one wanted to play.