The French game development studio of the moment is undoubtedly Sandfall Interactive, the creator of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. That studio’s award-hogging game has been recognised not once but twice by French president Emmanuel Macron, by way of championing French creativity. But while such success can bring attention to a region, it can also put pressure on.
One French studio facing the spill-over glare at the moment is Tactical Adventures, whose role-playing game Solasta 2 launches in early access tomorrow, 12th March. To make matters even more pressurised, Solasta 2 is compared heavily to Baldur’s Gate 3 – and for some good reasons – though there are important differences to note.
But there’s no rivalry felt by Tactical Adventures. When I asked CEO Mathieu Girard and marketing director Pierre Worgague what they felt when seeing another French studio achieve such success, they both, simultaneously, without any hesitation, said “pride”.
Girard added: “I met Guillaume [Broche – CEO of Sandfall] and François [Meurisse – COO of Sandfall] six years ago in a Tex Mex restaurant next to our offices, when they came to ask for advice on creating a studio, and now I’m calling Guillaume to get advice on Unreal stuff. So the wheel turns. It’s really funny.
“They are great guys,” he added, “and I would say we’re both very proud of what they did because it’s super impressive, and also it puts a positive pressure on trying to do as successfully as they did with their own game. But yes, we know them, it’s a great studio. It’s very impressive what they did and we will try to do as they did. But snatching as many prizes is going to be difficult,” he said with a smile.
“We’re absolute fans of what they did,” Worgague added. “It’s a great example of what the French can do sometimes.”
I hadn’t realised there was a link between the two studios before I talked to Girard and Worgague, in both having ties to publisher Kepler Interactive. Kepler was a publishing partner for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 whereas it’s a majority investor in Tactical Adventures, I’m told (though you wouldn’t know it from looking at Solasta 2’s Steam page, where Tactical Adventures is listed as the publisher). “We still maintain a full creative direction and flexibility,” Girard said.
But if Clair Obscur has taught Kepler and Tactical Adventures anything, Girard said, it’s that quality rules all. “The important part to take away is that quality has a tremendous impact on the success of a game,” Girard said, “and Kepler did give the time to Sandfall to polish the game in a great way.
“This is the feedback we have from Kepler as well for Solasta 2, to take the time to make it good, to make sure it has the right level of quality polish, even for early access. Because nowadays, for early access, you must have the almost release quality for the game, otherwise you’re going to be pounded by the consumers, maybe rightfully, because there were some disappointing early accesses in the past. But anyway, I think yes, this attention to quality is really a good marker of success nowadays.”
Solasta 2 launches tomorrow in Steam early access and offers around 10-15 hours of a fuller experience that’s still in development. There are still character classes and ancestries (playable races) to come, online co-op multiplayer to add, and systems like crafting to implement. What’s there is a start and, judging by what I’ve played, it’s a promising start indeed.
