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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous sales triumph. Developer the development team and publisher Kepler Interactive revealed that this title exceeded five million copies sold, this is even with it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we would have a solid title that would meet moderate market performance,” a key executive explained.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked that Clair Obscur’s review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, was the greatest surprise” for everyone versus “our initial expectations and what the reality proved to be. Because when it dropped everybody in the studio were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success resulted in the studio creating new free content for the title featuring fresh areas, adversaries, plus epic encounters, reportedly would be out sometime soon.

That said, as the title expands, it's unlikely the team will expand. “We have an excellent group guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for our work and future concepts. We'd like to keep the human scale that made this possible then develop large projects one by one,” the producer added.

Their team size generated significant conversation following launch. Certain industry figures, like Hideo Kojima, looked at Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for a studio. Although the team is and was indeed a small team next to major studios, one glance at the game's credits indicates numerous contributors participated; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly if we have next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the producer commented. “But I would see more of a workshop with a small number of highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” He noted that their core belief as developers “aims to keep the successful elements that enabled this success from the start.”

While it may be premature for the studio to disclose concrete plans about future projects — believe me, I tried to get them to — the developers understand their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of our creations,” the lead programmer said. “It's still premature to specify future passions, however, it's crucial to remain faithful 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 visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”