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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous commercial success. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game surpassed 5 million units in sales, and that’s even with its status as a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite an unexpected turn for the team. I was convinced that we would have a solid title garnering reasonable market performance,” a senior team member stated.

A technical director noted the game's review aggregate, now standing at 93, was the greatest surprise” to the studio compared to our early predictions and what the reality of the field was. When the score released the entire team celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for players including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, which they said is coming sometime soon.

However, as the title expands, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. Our team includes a great team guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for this game and also for new ideas. We intend to preserve the human scale that led to our success then develop large projects one by one,” the producer added.

Their team size generated plenty of debate when the game came out. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, viewed Sandfall’s team as the “ideal” for creative teams. While Sandfall was and is indeed a small team compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits indicates many individuals participated; Sandfall contracted a Korean team to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“We will hire a bit more for sure when facing an increase in development down the line,” the executive commented. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of exceptionally gifted creators that can make collective masterpieces.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a studio “focuses on preserving the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, is integral to our identity of our creations,” the lead programmer said. “It's a bit too early to announce what will interest us, however, it's crucial to stay true to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

They added that the project began with the creative director developing his passion title. We aspire that's something we will be able to do with upcoming games.”