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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year candidate, but also a massive financial hit. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner announced that the game topped 5 million units sold, and that’s despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success was an unexpected turn for the team. I was convinced that we would have a good game that would meet reasonable market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted the game's Metacritic rating, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the studio relative to our early predictions and the actual outcome of the field was. When the score released everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph resulted in the studio creating new free content for the game with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, as announced will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, as the title expands, don’t expect the team will expand. “We have an excellent group guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for the project and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that led to our success then develop one big game after another,” they noted.

The size of Sandfall sparked plenty of debate upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, considered Sandfall’s team as the model for creative teams. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list shows that dozens of people worked on it; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more for sure if we have an increase in development down the line,” the executive commented. “However, I envision essentially a craft studio with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that can make a work of art together.” It was stated that their core belief as developers “is more to maintain the key advantages that made this achievement possible originally.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically about future projects — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” a developer said. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell what will interest us, yet we must to remain faithful to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The developer noted how this game originated from the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”