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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive GOTY contender, it’s also a massive commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner announced that this title exceeded five million copies in sales, and that’s despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance was a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a solid title achieving some average sales results,” the COO and producer stated.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked the game's review aggregate, which currently sits at 93, was “maybe the biggest shock to the team relative to our early predictions and the final result proved to be. Once it was published everybody in the studio celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph prompted work on a free update for players including novel settings, foes, along with challenging bosses, which they said will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

That said, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the studio to grow. We've built a great team with a strong creative director who has a great vision for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the human scale that worked for this game and do maybe large projects one by one,” they added.

The studio's scale drummed up significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, including renowned designers, viewed the development group as a perfect example for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at the game's credits shows that dozens of people participated; the French studio partnered with overseas animators for animation work, as an instance.

“Some hiring will occur a little more for sure if we have 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 create collective masterpieces.” He noted that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the successful elements that enabled this success in the first place.”

Despite being not the right time to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — believe me, I attempted to learn more — the developers understand what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of our creations,” the lead programmer explained. “It's a bit too early to specify future passions, but it's important also to remain faithful to our creative core with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The developer added how this game started with the creative director “work[ing] on his dream game. We aspire that philosophy we will be able to do as well for future productions.”