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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game topped 5 million units sold, and that’s despite it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance was a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game achieving reasonable sales results,” a senior team member explained.

A technical director remarked the game's Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to our early predictions and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception prompted Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for the game with a new environment, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. Our team includes a talented crew guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for this game plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and do maybe large projects one by one,” the producer added.

The studio's scale generated plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for a studio. Despite being indeed a small team next to major studios, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals many individuals worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly when facing next an upcoming production peak down the line,” they stated. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people that create collective masterpieces.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a company “aims to keep the successful elements that enabled this success in the first place.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” they remarked. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, however, it's crucial to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

The developer mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that's something we can continue as well for future productions.”