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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a huge commercial success. Developer the development team along with publisher their publishing partner disclosed that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s even with its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as a shock for the team. I was convinced that we'd create a good game that would meet reasonable market performance,” a key executive explained.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s critical score, rated 93 by critics, was the most surprising moment to the team relative to “our initial expectations and what the reality of the field was. When the score released everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception prompted work on new free content for players featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. Our team includes a great team guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for this game and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game then develop major titles sequentially,” they said.

Their team size generated significant conversation upon the title's release. Certain industry figures, such as the famed director, looked at Sandfall’s team as the model for a studio. Despite being relatively lean next to major studios, one glance at the game's credits indicates numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We plan to recruit slightly more for sure if we have an increase in development in the coming years,” they commented. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few really talented people capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the key advantages that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the team does know what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, however, it's crucial to remain faithful to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer mentioned that the project started with the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that's something we can continue with upcoming games.”