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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive GOTY candidate, but also a huge sales triumph. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher their publishing partner announced that the game exceeded five million copies sold, and that’s despite it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as quite an unexpected turn to Sandfall. I firmly believed that we'd create a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer commented.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked this title's review aggregate, now standing at 93, was the most surprising moment for everyone compared to what we anticipated and the final result proved to be. Once it was published the entire team was screaming and jumping. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception prompted the studio creating a complimentary expansion for the title with a new environment, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said is coming sometime soon.

That said, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. We've built a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for our work and future concepts. We'd like to keep the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create large projects one by one,” the producer said.

The size of Sandfall generated a storm of discussion when the game came out. Some developers, such as the famed director, looked at the development group as the model for game development. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure if we have next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the executive said. “Yet I picture more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as developers “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

Despite being premature for the studio to say specifically about future projects — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” they explained. “It's still premature to announce our next interests, but it's important also to remain faithful to our creative core featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that drives our passion.”

They noted that the project originated from their director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy will be repeated with upcoming games.”