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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY contender, it’s also a huge sales triumph. Studio the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that this title topped 5 million units sold, this is in spite of it being a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

Its success was an unexpected turn for the team. I was convinced that we'd create a solid title that would meet moderate commercial success,” the COO and producer explained.

A technical director remarked this title's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock to the team relative to our early predictions and the final result turned out to be. When the score released everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. The energy was electric.”

This triumph has led to work on new free content for players featuring fresh areas, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said will release sometime soon.

That said, while the game is growing, it's unlikely the studio to grow. “We have a talented crew under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and do maybe major titles sequentially,” they added.

The size of Sandfall generated significant conversation following launch. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, considered Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the game's credits indicates dozens of people participated; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“We will hire a bit more for sure if we have next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals that can make a work of art together.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the strengths that made this achievement possible from the start.”

Although it's too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of this project,” they explained. “It's a bit too early to specify 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 mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy will be repeated with upcoming games.”