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The development cost of “Light and Shadow: Expedition 33” is less than 10 million US dollars, with a team of about 30 members.
The development cost and the size of the development team of “Light and Shadow: Expedition 33”, the biggest winner at the TGA2025 Awards Ceremony, were both revealed in an interview with Guillaume Broche, CEO of developer Sandfall Interactive, by The New York Times.
Guillaume Broche stated that due to factors such as the development team having only about 30 people and a development budget of less than 10 million US dollars (equivalent to approximately 70 million RMB), “Light and Shadow: Expedition 33” abandoned the “open world” model that has been relatively popular in recent years.
Also released in 2025, among these games, the development cost of *Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2* is approximately 6 billion yen (equivalent to about 270 million yuan), which is almost 4 times the development cost of *Light and Shadow: Expedition 33*; the development cost of *Assassin’s Creed: Shadows* is even as high as 17 billion yen (equivalent to about 770 million yuan), roughly 11 times the development cost of *Light and Shadow: Expedition 33*. In comparison, *Light and Shadow: Expedition 33*, with a cost of less than 10 million US dollars, seems particularly low against the backdrop where the development costs of 3A titles nowadays often reach hundreds of millions of dollars.
During an interview, Guillaume Broche stated that in order to save costs, during the development of *Light and Shadow: Expedition 33*, the team not only abandoned the “open world” model, which is very popular in current game development, but also drew on the “conventions” of turn – based role – playing games. The purpose of doing this is that designers do not need to draw all the details to make all players feel the vastness of the game world. Coupled with corridor – style levels and dedicated combat areas, the game development costs have been sufficiently reduced.
