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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong GOTY contender, but also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title surpassed 5 million units in sales, and that’s in spite of its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a solid title achieving reasonable market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment for everyone relative to “our initial expectations and what the reality of the field was. Once it was published the entire team were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception prompted work on a free update for the game including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, which they said would be out in the next few months.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the team will expand. Our team includes an excellent group with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that led to our success then develop large projects one by one,” the producer said.

The studio's scale sparked significant conversation upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, considered this studio as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean versus large developers, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure if we have an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive said. “But I would see essentially a craft studio with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be premature for the studio to say specifically what’s next — and trust me, efforts were made — the team does know their fundamental principles. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer said. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, however, it's crucial to stay true to our studio's essence through compelling worlds plus innovative play that excites us.”

They noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with their director developing his passion title. We aspire this approach we can continue in coming projects.”