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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a top Game of the Year contender, but also a huge commercial success. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive disclosed that the game surpassed five million copies sold, this is in spite of it being a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

This achievement came as quite a shock to the developers. I was convinced that we would have a good game garnering some average commercial success,” a key executive commented.

The CTO and lead programmer pointed out the game's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as the greatest surprise” to the team versus “our initial expectations and the final result turned out to be. Because when it dropped the entire team were cheering loudly. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success prompted the studio creating new free content for players including novel settings, enemies, plus epic encounters, reportedly will release within the “upcoming month[s]”.

However, despite the game's evolution, it's unlikely they'll hire extensively. We've built a great team with a strong creative director possessing strong ideas for the project and future concepts. We intend to preserve the small-team dynamic that made this possible and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the executive said.

Their team size sparked plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, such as the famed director, viewed the development group as the “ideal” for a studio. Although the team is and was truly compact versus large developers, one glance at Expedition 33’s credits indicates dozens of people participated; Sandfall hired a team in Korea to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur slightly more for sure if we have an increase in development in upcoming years,” they commented. “But I would see essentially a craft studio of a few highly skilled individuals that create artistic collaborations.” They emphasized that the studio's philosophy as developers “focuses on preserving the strengths that enabled this success in the first place.”

While it may be too early for Sandfall to disclose concrete plans about future projects — believe me, efforts were made — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, forms the foundation of this project,” the lead programmer said. “It's still premature to be able to tell our next interests, yet we must to remain faithful to the DNA of studio through compelling worlds and the interesting gameplay that inspires the team.”

They added how this game originated from the visionary “work[ing] on his dream game. It is hoped that's something we will be able to do in coming projects.”