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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a strong Game of the Year candidate, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner announced that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, and that’s in spite of it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a shock to Sandfall. I was convinced that we would have a good game achieving reasonable sales results,” a senior team member stated.

Another leading developer noted that Clair Obscur’s critical score, now standing at 93, was the most surprising moment to the studio compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception prompted the studio creating a free update for the game with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, which they said would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. We've built an excellent group with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” they said.

The size of Sandfall sparked a storm of discussion when the game came out. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, looked at this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely when facing an increase in development down the line,” the producer stated. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that create artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a company “aims to keep the key advantages that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — believe me, I tried to get them to — they are certain what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's a bit too early to specify what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do as well for future productions.”