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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a strong Game of the Year candidate, but also a massive commercial success. Studio the development team and publisher their publishing partner revealed that this title topped five million copies sold, this is even with it being a launch-day addition on Xbox Game Pass.

Its success was a surprise to the developers. I firmly believed that we would have an enjoyable experience that would meet reasonable market performance,” the COO and producer explained.

Another leading developer noted that Clair Obscur’s Metacritic rating, rated 93 by critics, came as perhaps the greatest surprise” to the studio relative to what we anticipated and the actual outcome proved to be. Once it was published all staff members were cheering loudly. It was really frantic.”

This triumph resulted in the studio creating a free update for players featuring fresh areas, enemies, plus epic encounters, as announced will release sometime soon.

That said, despite the game's evolution, fans shouldn't anticipate they'll hire extensively. “We have a great team guided by a visionary director with a clear direction for this game and also for new ideas. We'd like to keep the small-team dynamic that worked for this game and do maybe one big game after another,” the producer noted.

Their team size drummed up plenty of debate following launch. Some developers, such as the famed director, considered Sandfall’s team as a perfect example for game development. Although the team is and was relatively lean next to major studios, a quick look at the game's credits indicates numerous contributors worked on it; Sandfall partnered with overseas animators for animation work, for example.

“Some hiring will occur a little more definitely when facing next an upcoming production peak in the coming years,” the executive stated. “Yet I picture rather a creative atelier with a small number of highly skilled individuals that create a work of art together.” It was stated that Sandfall’s vision as a studio “focuses on preserving the key advantages that enabled this success from the start.”

While it may be premature for the studio to say specifically regarding upcoming titles — and trust me, 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 our creations,” a developer said. “It's a bit too early to specify what will interest us, but it's important also to remain faithful to the DNA of studio with [a] strong narrative universe plus innovative play that excites us.”

The developer added that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 began with their director “work[ing] on his dream game. And hopefully this approach will be repeated in coming projects.”