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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY contender, but also a huge commercial success. Developer the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title surpassed 5 million units sold, and that’s despite it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a surprise to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create an enjoyable experience achieving reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted this title's critical score, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team compared to “our initial expectations and the actual outcome proved to be. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph has led to work on a free update for the game with a new environment, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

However, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. “We have an excellent group under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for this game and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible and do maybe one big game after another,” the producer noted.

The studio's scale sparked significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Although the team is and was relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits shows that many individuals worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a little more definitely should there be an increase in development in upcoming years,” the executive said. “However, I envision more of a workshop of a few highly skilled individuals that can make a work of art together.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as developers “is more to maintain the successful elements that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

Despite being premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans about future projects — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of our creations,” they explained. “It's still premature to announce what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to our creative core featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that excites us.”

The lead programmer added that the project started with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that philosophy we will be able to do with upcoming games.”