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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just an impressive Game of the Year contender, but also an enormous commercial success. Developer Sandfall Interactive along with publisher Kepler Interactive announced that this title exceeded 5 million units sold, this is despite it being a day-one release through the Game Pass service.

The game's performance came as an unexpected turn to the developers. I firmly believed that we'd create an enjoyable experience that would meet moderate market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked the game's review aggregate, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps “maybe the biggest shock for everyone versus what we anticipated and the actual outcome proved to be. Once it was published all staff members celebrated excitedly. It felt absolutely wild.”

The positive reception resulted in Sandfall developing new free content for players with a new environment, foes, plus epic encounters, as announced would be out sometime soon.

That said, while the game is growing, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. Our team includes an excellent group guided by a visionary director possessing strong ideas for this game plus upcoming innovations. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and do maybe major titles sequentially,” they said.

The size of Sandfall sparked significant conversation when the game came out. Some developers, like Hideo Kojima, looked at Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. Despite being truly compact versus large developers, checking Expedition 33’s credits reveals dozens of people worked on it; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators handling movement and effects, as an instance.

“We will hire a little more certainly if we have an increase in development in the coming years,” they commented. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of really talented people that create collective masterpieces.” It was stated that their core belief as a studio “is more to maintain the successful elements that made this achievement possible originally.”

Despite being not the right time to reveal exact details what’s next — and trust me, I tried to get them to — they are certain what’s at its core. “Turn-based gameplay, forms the foundation of what we built,” a developer explained. “The timing isn't right to announce what will interest us, but it's important also to remain faithful to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe and the interesting gameplay that excites us.”

They noted that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 started with the creative director pursuing his ideal project. It is hoped that's something we will be able to do as well for future productions.”