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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite an unexpected turn for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create an enjoyable experience garnering some average commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted this title's critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment for everyone relative to our early predictions and the actual outcome proved to be. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception resulted in the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the title featuring fresh areas, foes, plus epic encounters, reportedly is coming sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes a talented crew under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for our work and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success and do maybe large projects one by one,” they noted.

Their team size generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for a studio. While Sandfall was and is truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the game's credits indicates many individuals were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit a bit more definitely should there be a future production surge down the line,” the producer said. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that their core belief as a company “aims to keep the key advantages that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being premature for the studio to reveal exact details what’s next — believe me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of this project,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's still premature to be able to tell our next interests, however, it's crucial to stay true to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The developer mentioned that the project originated from the creative director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully this approach we can continue in coming projects.”