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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year candidate, but also a massive commercial success. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title topped five million copies sold, this is despite its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game achieving moderate sales results,” a key executive explained.

A technical director remarked the game's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the studio versus “our initial expectations and the final result of the field was. When the score released all staff members were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success has led to work on a complimentary expansion for players including novel settings, enemies, and boss fights, as announced would be out sometime soon.

Nevertheless, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for this game and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the small-team dynamic that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they said.

Their team size generated plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for a studio. While Sandfall was and is truly compact versus large developers, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits indicates dozens of people were involved; Sandfall hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit a bit more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the executive stated. “But I would see more of a workshop of a few exceptionally gifted creators that can make artistic collaborations.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a studio “is more to maintain the successful elements that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” they explained. “The timing isn't right to announce future passions, however, it's crucial to stay true to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

They noted that the project started with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire this approach we will be able to do with upcoming games.”