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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year candidate, but also a massive commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive announced that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, this is despite its status as a launch-day addition through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as quite a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we'd create a good game garnering some average market performance,” a key executive explained.

Another leading developer remarked that Clair Obscur’s critical score, now standing at 93, was the most surprising moment to the team compared to what we anticipated and the actual outcome proved to be. When the score released all staff members were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

That success prompted Sandfall developing new free content for the game including novel settings, foes, plus epic encounters, which they said is coming sometime soon.

That said, despite the game's evolution, don’t expect they'll hire extensively. “We have a great team under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for the project and also for new ideas. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that worked for this game and perhaps create one big game after another,” the executive said.

The size of Sandfall generated plenty of debate following launch. Certain industry figures, including renowned designers, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for creative teams. Although the team is and was indeed a small team versus large developers, one glance at the title's staff list indicates dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly should there be an increase in development down the line,” the executive commented. “Yet I picture essentially a craft studio with a small number of highly skilled individuals capable of producing artistic collaborations.” He noted that their core belief as developers “is more to maintain the strengths that made this achievement possible originally.”

While it may be not the right time to reveal exact details regarding upcoming titles — rest assured, I attempted to learn more — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of our creations,” the lead programmer remarked. “The timing isn't right to be able to tell what will interest us, but it's important also to remain faithful to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

The developer noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the visionary developing his passion title. We aspire that philosophy we will be able to do in coming projects.”