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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year candidate, it’s also a huge financial hit. Developer the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that the game exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as quite a surprise for the team. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game that would meet reasonable commercial success,” a senior team member explained.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out the game's review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the team versus our early predictions and what the reality turned out to be. Because when it dropped all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph prompted work on a complimentary expansion for the game with a new environment, foes, and boss fights, as announced would be out in the next few months.

However, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have a great team guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for our work and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the close-knit size that worked for this game and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive added.

The studio's scale drummed up a storm of discussion following launch. Some developers, including renowned designers, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for a studio. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team versus large developers, one glance at the title's staff list indicates many individuals were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly should there be a future production surge in the coming years,” they stated. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier comprising a handful exceptionally gifted creators that create collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans about future projects — rest assured, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” the lead programmer remarked. “It's still premature to be able to tell what will interest us, yet we must to stay true to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully that's something will be repeated in coming projects.”