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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY contender, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title exceeded five million copies in sales, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement came as an unexpected turn for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create an enjoyable experience that would meet moderate sales results,” a key executive stated.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out that Clair Obscur’s critical score, which currently sits at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the team relative to what we anticipated and the final result of the field was. Because when it dropped the entire team were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success prompted the studio creating a free update for the title with a new environment, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced will release sometime soon.

Nevertheless, while the game is growing, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. “We have a great team under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” they added.

Their team size sparked plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the model for game development. While Sandfall was and is truly compact versus large developers, checking the game's credits indicates numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a little more definitely should there be an increase in development in the coming years,” the executive said. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals capable of producing a work of art together.” They emphasized that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “is more to maintain the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to disclose concrete plans about future projects — and trust me, I tried to get them to — they are certain what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” they explained. “It's still premature to be able to tell future passions, but it's important also to stay true to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned how this game originated from the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped this approach we will be able to do in coming projects.”