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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY candidate, it’s also an enormous financial hit. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game surpassed five million copies in sales, this is in spite of its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success came as quite a surprise for the team. “I was strongly believing that we would have a good game achieving reasonable commercial success,” a key executive stated.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, came as the greatest surprise” for everyone relative to what we anticipated and what the reality turned out to be. Once it was published all staff members were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph prompted Sandfall developing a free update for players including novel settings, adversaries, plus epic encounters, as announced would be out in the next few months.

That said, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. “We have a great team with a strong creative director with a clear direction for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the human scale that worked for this game and perhaps create one big game after another,” the executive said.

Their team size drummed up a storm of discussion when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, looked at this studio as the model for game development. Despite being relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, a quick look at the game's credits shows that numerous contributors were involved; Sandfall contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit a bit more for sure should there be an increase in development in upcoming years,” the producer said. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier of a few highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as a studio “aims to keep the key advantages that made this achievement possible in the first place.”

Although it's not the right time to disclose concrete plans what’s next — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — they are certain their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” a developer said. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell our next interests, however, it's crucial to stay true to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They mentioned that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire this approach we can continue with upcoming games.”