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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top GOTY contender, but also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title surpassed 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 an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create a good game achieving some average sales results,” the COO and producer stated.

The CTO and lead programmer noted the game's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as the greatest surprise” for everyone compared to what we anticipated and what the reality turned out to be. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success has led to work on a free update for the game including novel settings, enemies, along with challenging bosses, which they said would be out in the next few months.

That said, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. We've built a great team guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for this game plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the close-knit size that made this possible and perhaps create major titles sequentially,” they added.

Their team size generated significant conversation following launch. Some developers, such as the famed director, looked at the development group as the model for a studio. While Sandfall was and is truly compact next to major studios, a quick look at the title's staff list indicates dozens of people were involved; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators handling movement and effects, for example.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more definitely should there be next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive stated. “However, I envision more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals that create collective masterpieces.” It was stated that the studio's philosophy as developers “is more to maintain the successful elements that led to this accomplishment from the start.”

While it may be premature for the studio to reveal exact details about future projects — and trust me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand their essential identity. “Turn-based gameplay, is integral to our identity of what we built,” a developer explained. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell future passions, but it's important also to remain faithful to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

They noted that the project started with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we can continue as well for future productions.”