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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive GOTY contender, but also a huge commercial success. Studio the development team along with publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game surpassed 5 million units sold, this is in spite of it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

Its success was a shock to Sandfall. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game garnering some average market performance,” a senior team member stated.

A technical director noted this title's Metacritic rating, now standing at 93, came as “maybe the biggest shock to the studio relative to what we anticipated and the final result turned out to be. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

This triumph has led to work on a complimentary expansion for the title with a new environment, foes, along with challenging bosses, which they said would be out sometime soon.

That said, while the game is growing, don’t expect the studio to grow. Our team includes a talented crew under clear creative leadership possessing strong ideas for the project and future concepts. We'd like to keep the close-knit size that worked for this game and perhaps create one big game after another,” the executive said.

Their team size generated a storm of discussion following launch. A few well-known creators, including renowned designers, considered this studio as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was truly compact compared to its AAA counterparts, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals many individuals participated; the French studio contracted a Korean team handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“We will hire slightly more for sure should there be next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the producer stated. “But I would see rather a creative atelier of a few exceptionally gifted creators capable of producing a work of art together.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “aims to keep the key advantages that led to this accomplishment in the first place.”

Although it's not the right time to say specifically what’s next — rest assured, I tried to get them to — they are certain what’s at its core. “The turn-based aspect, I think it's in the DNA of this project,” the lead programmer remarked. “The timing isn't right to specify what will interest us, but it's important also to adhere to our studio's essence featuring rich storytelling and engaging mechanics that excites us.”

They mentioned that the project began with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully that's something we can continue in coming projects.”