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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year contender, but also a massive financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success was an unexpected turn for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a solid title that would meet reasonable sales results,” a key executive explained.

A technical director noted this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the studio versus “our initial expectations and the final result of the field was. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph has led to Sandfall developing new free content for the title featuring fresh areas, foes, along with challenging bosses, which they said will release in the next few months.

That said, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that led to our success then develop one big game after another,” the executive said.

The size of Sandfall sparked a storm of discussion following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, considered the development group as the “ideal” for game development. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team versus large developers, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits shows that dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“We will hire a bit more for sure when facing an increase in development in the coming years,” they said. “But I would see more of a workshop of a few really talented people that can make collective masterpieces.” He noted that their core belief as developers “is more to maintain the strengths that enabled this success originally.”

Despite being not the right time to disclose concrete plans about future projects — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand what’s at its core. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer explained. “The timing isn't right to announce our next interests, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our creative core through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer mentioned that the project started with the visionary developing his passion title. And hopefully that's something we can continue as well for future productions.”