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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY candidate, it’s also a massive financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that this title topped five million copies sold, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create an enjoyable experience that would meet some average sales results,” a key executive stated.

Another leading developer remarked the game's review aggregate, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the studio relative to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Once it was published the entire team was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to work on new free content for the game with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced is coming in the next few months.

However, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. We've built an excellent group under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the human scale that worked for this game and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive added.

Their team size sparked significant conversation when the game came out. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, considered the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the title's staff list reveals dozens of people were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“We will hire slightly more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the executive said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier comprising a handful highly skilled individuals capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as a company “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — and trust me, efforts were made — the team does know what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's still premature to be able to tell our next interests, but it's important also to stay true to our creative core featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The developer mentioned that the project began with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire that's something we will be able to do as well for future productions.”