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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game surpassed five million copies sold, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as a shock for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create an enjoyable experience achieving some average sales results,” the COO and producer commented.

A technical director noted this title's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus “our initial expectations and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped all staff members celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception resulted in Sandfall developing new free content for the title with a new environment, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly will release in the next few months.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have a great team guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that made this possible then develop one big game after another,” the executive said.

The studio's scale generated significant conversation following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for creative teams. Although the team is and was relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at the title's staff list indicates many individuals worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, as an instance.

“We will hire slightly more for sure if we have a future production surge in the coming years,” they commented. “But I would see essentially a craft studio of a few really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the key advantages that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details what’s next — believe me, efforts were made — they are certain what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” they said. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell our next interests, but it's important also to remain faithful to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”