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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game topped 5 million units in sales, this is in spite of its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have an enjoyable experience garnering reasonable commercial success,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked the game's critical score, now standing at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the studio compared to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in Sandfall developing a free update for the title including novel settings, enemies, along with challenging bosses, as announced is coming in the next few months.

That said, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director with a clear direction for our work and future concepts. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they added.

Their team size drummed up a storm of discussion upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for creative teams. Despite being truly compact next to major studios, checking the title's staff list indicates dozens of people participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more certainly should there be next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive commented. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals capable of producing a work of art together.” It was stated that their core belief as developers “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success in the first place.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of this project,” they said. “The timing isn't right to specify future passions, yet we must to adhere to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The lead programmer added how this game originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do as well for future productions.”