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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded 5 million units in sales, this is in spite of its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success came as a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a solid title that would meet reasonable sales results,” the COO and producer stated.

Another leading developer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as the most surprising moment to the team compared to what we anticipated and the final result of the field was. Once it was published everybody in the studio was screaming and jumping. The energy was electric.”

The positive reception has led to work on new free content for the game with a new environment, adversaries, along with challenging bosses, as announced will release sometime soon.

However, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. Our team includes a talented crew with a strong creative director with a clear direction for the project plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that made this possible and perhaps create one big game after another,” the producer said.

Their team size drummed up a storm of discussion upon the title's release. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking the title's staff list reveals numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, as an instance.

“We will hire a bit more for sure when facing next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” they commented. “But I would see rather a creative atelier comprising a handful really talented people that can make artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that enabled this success originally.”

Although it's premature for the studio to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their fundamental principles. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” a developer explained. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell future passions, yet we must to remain faithful to our studio's essence with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that inspires the team.”

They noted how this game began with their director developing his passion title. We aspire that's something will be repeated as well for future productions.”