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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only an impressive GOTY contender, but also an enormous commercial success. Developer the development team along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded 5 million units in sales, and that’s despite it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement was a surprise to Sandfall. I was convinced that we'd create a solid title that would meet reasonable commercial success,” the COO and producer stated.

A technical director remarked this title's critical score, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the team versus our early predictions and the actual outcome proved to be. Once it was published the entire team were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success has led to Sandfall developing a complimentary expansion for players featuring fresh areas, foes, plus epic encounters, as announced would be out within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely the studio to grow. We've built an excellent group guided by a visionary director who has a great vision for this game and future concepts. We intend to preserve the human scale that worked for this game then develop major titles sequentially,” the executive noted.

The studio's scale drummed up plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for game development. Despite being truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at Expedition 33’s credits indicates dozens of people were involved; the French studio contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“We will hire a little more for sure if we have a future production surge in upcoming years,” they commented. “However, I envision rather a creative atelier with a small number of highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” He noted that their core belief as a company “focuses on preserving the successful elements that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

While it may be not the right time to disclose concrete plans what’s next — and trust me, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of what we built,” the lead programmer said. “The timing isn't right to specify what will interest us, yet we must to adhere to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They noted that the project started with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that philosophy we can continue with upcoming games.”