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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY candidate, it’s also a huge commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s even with its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

This achievement was a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have an enjoyable experience garnering some average market performance,” a key executive explained.

The CTO and lead programmer noted this title's review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” for everyone compared to our early predictions and what the reality of the field was. Because when it dropped the entire team was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

That success has led to Sandfall developing new free content for players with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, which they said is coming sometime soon.

That said, as the title expands, don’t expect the studio to grow. We've built a great team under clear creative leadership who has a great vision for our work plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that worked for this game and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” the executive added.

The size of Sandfall drummed up a storm of discussion when the game came out. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Despite being indeed a small team versus large developers, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, for example.

“We plan to recruit slightly more certainly should there be next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive said. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of really talented people capable of producing collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that their core belief 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 say specifically regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, I think it's in the DNA of what we built,” a developer remarked. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, but it's important also to adhere to our creative core through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that inspires the team.”

They noted that the project began with their director pursuing his ideal project. And hopefully this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”