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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous financial hit. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success was an unexpected turn for the team. I firmly believed that we would have a solid title garnering reasonable commercial success,” a key executive stated.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the studio versus what we anticipated and what the reality turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success has led to the studio creating new free content for players with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out in the next few months.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. Our team includes a great team under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for this game and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that led to our success and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they added.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, looked at Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. Despite being relatively lean versus large developers, one glance at the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more for sure when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they said. “Yet I picture more of a workshop comprising a handful highly skilled individuals that can make collective masterpieces.” It was stated that their core belief as a company “is more to maintain the successful elements that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of our creations,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to specify what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

They mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 originated from the visionary developing his passion title. It is hoped that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”