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The game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't just a top Game of the Year contender, it’s also an enormous commercial success. Studio Sandfall Interactive and publisher their publishing partner revealed that the game exceeded 5 million units sold, and that’s despite its status as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass.

The game's performance came as quite a shock for the team. “I was strongly believing that we'd create a good game achieving reasonable commercial success,” a senior team member commented.

The CTO and lead programmer remarked this title's critical score, which currently sits at 93, was the most surprising moment to the studio relative to our early predictions and the actual outcome turned out to be. Because when it dropped all staff members was screaming and jumping. It felt absolutely wild.”

That success prompted work on new free content for players with a new environment, enemies, and boss fights, reportedly is coming in the next few months.

That said, as the title expands, fans shouldn't anticipate the team will expand. “We have an excellent group with a strong creative director who has a great vision for the project and future concepts. Our goal is to maintain the human scale that led to our success and do maybe major titles sequentially,” the producer added.

The size of Sandfall drummed up plenty of debate following launch. A few well-known creators, like Hideo Kojima, considered the development group as a perfect example for creative teams. Despite being indeed a small team next to major studios, one glance at the game's credits reveals numerous contributors worked on it; the French studio partnered with overseas animators to work on gameplay animations, to illustrate.

“Some hiring will occur a bit more certainly if we have a future production surge in the coming years,” the executive stated. “Yet I picture more of a workshop comprising a handful highly skilled individuals that can make artistic collaborations.” He noted that their core belief as developers “aims to keep the key advantages that enabled this success originally.”

Although it's not the right time to reveal exact details about future projects — believe me, I tried to get them to — the team does know their essential identity. “The turn-based aspect, is integral to our identity of what we built,” the lead programmer said. “It's a bit too early to announce our next interests, however, it's crucial to stay true to our studio's essence through compelling worlds and engaging mechanics that drives our passion.”

The lead programmer added that the project started with their director pursuing his ideal project. We aspire this approach we can continue in coming projects.”