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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year candidate, but also an enormous sales triumph. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game surpassed five million copies sold, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as an unexpected turn to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create a good game achieving some average sales results,” a senior team member stated.

A technical director remarked the game's critical score, rated 93 by critics, came as the most surprising moment to the team compared to what we anticipated and the final result proved to be. Because when it dropped the entire team was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

This triumph has led to Sandfall developing new free content for players including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, as announced is coming sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for this game and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that made this possible and do maybe major titles sequentially,” they noted.

The studio's scale sparked plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, looked at the development group as the model for game development. Although the team is and was indeed a small team next to major studios, one glance at the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“We plan to recruit a little more certainly when facing a future production surge in the coming years,” they said. “But I would see essentially a craft studio comprising a handful highly skilled individuals capable of producing collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a company “aims to keep the successful elements that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being not the right time to say specifically about future projects — believe me, I attempted to learn more — they are certain their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” the lead programmer explained. “It's still premature to be able to tell what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

They noted that the project originated from the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”