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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong GOTY contender, but also a massive sales triumph. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed five million copies sold, this is even with it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as quite a shock to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we would have a solid title garnering some average commercial success,” a senior team member explained.

A technical director noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, was the greatest surprise” to the studio relative to what we anticipated and the final result proved to be. When the score released the entire team were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception resulted in the studio creating new free content for the game featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said is coming within the “upcoming month[s]”.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. “We have a great team with a strong creative director who has a great vision for our work plus upcoming innovations. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” the producer noted.

Their team size generated plenty of debate upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, looked at Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. While Sandfall was and is truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits shows that numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team for animation work, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a little more definitely if we have next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” they stated. “But I would see more of a workshop comprising a handful really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a company “focuses on preserving the key advantages that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans about future projects — believe me, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of what we built,” they 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 inspires the team.”

The lead programmer noted that the project started with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that philosophy we will be able to do as well for future productions.”