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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top GOTY contender, it’s also a massive commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner disclosed that this title exceeded 5 million units in sales, and that’s even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance was an unexpected turn to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a solid title garnering some average market performance,” a key executive commented.

A technical director remarked this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as perhaps the most surprising moment to the studio compared to what we anticipated and what the reality proved to be. When the score released all staff members celebrated excitedly. It was really frantic.”

The positive reception has led to Sandfall developing a free update for the game with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, which they said would be out sometime soon.

Nevertheless, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect the team will expand. We've built a great team under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for this game plus upcoming innovations. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success and do maybe one big game after another,” they added.

The size of Sandfall generated plenty of debate when the game came out. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, viewed this studio as the “ideal” for a studio. While Sandfall was and is relatively lean compared to its AAA counterparts, one glance at the title's staff list reveals many individuals were involved; the French studio hired a team in Korea for animation work, to illustrate.

“We plan to recruit a little more definitely if we have next an upcoming production peak in upcoming years,” the executive stated. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of really talented people that create artistic collaborations.” He noted that the studio's philosophy as developers “aims to keep the strengths that led to this accomplishment originally.”

Despite being too early for Sandfall to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “Strategic combat, forms the foundation of this project,” a developer remarked. “It's a bit too early to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to adhere to the DNA of studio featuring rich storytelling plus innovative play that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer added that the project began with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped that philosophy we will be able to do as well for future productions.”