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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a huge financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded five million copies in sales, this is even with its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as quite a shock to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title that would meet reasonable market performance,” a key executive stated.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the team compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome proved to be. Because when it dropped all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing new free content for players featuring fresh areas, enemies, and boss fights, which they said will release in the next few months.

However, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for the project and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the human scale that worked for this game then develop large projects one by one,” the executive said.

The size of Sandfall drummed up significant conversation upon the title's release. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. Despite being indeed a small team versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates numerous contributors participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“We will hire slightly more certainly when facing a future production surge in the coming years,” the producer stated. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing a work of art together.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

While it may be not the right time to disclose concrete plans what’s next — believe me, I tried to get them to — the developers understand what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” the lead programmer explained. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell what will interest us, but it's important also to remain faithful to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

The lead programmer added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that's something we can continue in coming projects.”