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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that this title topped 5 million units sold, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have an enjoyable experience garnering reasonable commercial success,” a key executive explained.

A technical director remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the team versus what we anticipated and the actual outcome of the field was. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception prompted work on a free update for the title with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. “We have a talented crew under clear creative leadership with a clear direction for the project and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and do maybe large projects one by one,” the executive noted.

The studio's scale sparked plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered Sandfall’s team as the model for game development. Although the team is and was truly compact next to major studios, checking the game's credits reveals dozens of people participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea for animation work, for example.

“We plan to recruit a little more certainly when facing a future production surge in upcoming years,” the producer commented. “But I would see rather a creative atelier with a small number of really talented people capable of producing artistic collaborations.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as a company “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success from the start.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically what’s next — believe me, I tried to get them to — they are certain their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of this project,” they explained. “It's a bit too early to specify our next interests, yet we must to stay true to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

The lead programmer mentioned how this game began with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped this approach we will be able to do as well for future productions.”